Sunday, September 4, 2011

Craters of the Moon

We left Three Island and were planning to stay in Arco for two nights and day trip to Craters of the Moon.  The info on Craters of the Moon indicated that it couldn’t accommodate a rig as big as ours, but it seemed a bit of a bummer because our campsite would be about 18 miles from Craters of the Moon.  We decided to stop anyway with the rig & see what we could see before heading to Arco.  So glad we did!  It turns out we were able to stay here after all!  This was our first experience with dry camping, and we weren’t exactly prepared for it; we had no water in our tanks & no way to get water in our tanks.  It all worked out though.  We were able to use our generator for the first time, which was a good trial run before our stay in Yellowstone. 

This was our campsite right in the park



What a cool place this is!  Not only is the park itself really neat, the staff was fabulous.  By camping here, we were able to attend the evening programs:  a Junior Ranger talk that the kids all participated well in, as well as a regular Ranger talk on astronomy, and the big kids & Steve went to a star-gazing party and learned even more about the solar system & constellations!

Guided cave walk with the awesome Ranger Lenny, who has a degree in Soviet history
Indian Tunnel
Spatter cones
One of the craters
At the top of the crater looking down on a sea of lava
The next morning we went on an early guided Ranger tour through Indian Tunnel.  We also did a little cave exploring on our own & determined that none of us are super fond of really tight & super dark places. It was still pretty cool though!
Junior ranger swearing in

1 comment:

Randi~Dukes and Duchesses said...

What an incredible place. Those craters are amazing. This is just such a neat experience for your kids ... I hope these memories really stay with them. I'm catching up on the blog so you might see lots of comments from me tonight. :)