With Craters of the Moon being a dark sky park, we couldn’t miss out on stargazing last night. We waited until the almost full moon set at about 3am and then Liam and I woke up to see what we could see. We located the Big Dipper and were able to see the Milky Way Galaxy, though satellites kept making an appearance in our dark sky photos.
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| Watching the moon set at 3am |
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| Big Dipper |
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| Milky Way |
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| See the satellite? |
After breakfast, we did the short North Crater Flow Trail right near our campsite to check out examples of the different kinds of lava flows. We saw Pahoehoe lava and Aa lava, as well as some really interesting monoliths that initially formed in the volcano, and then floated out on the lava flow and ended up settling in the middle of the lava field. Alistair found some beautiful wildflowers called Indian paint brushes, which were pretty special to see.
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| Indian paintbrush flowers |
After the boys earned their Junior Ranger badges, it was time to head out. We drove about an hour to get to Idaho’s Mammoth Cave and a really fascinating, privately owned bird and natural history museum. The museum was initially created by founder Richard Evans, who was a barber as well as a hunter and hobby taxidermist. The cave was a really large lava tube where we could to do a self guided tour through it using headlights and lanterns.
After lunch, we checked out the museums. They were packed to the rafters with every kind of taxidermied animal that you could imagine - from wolves, to giraffes, to weasels to pheasants. There were so many fossils and animals, pottery and clothes, and American Indian, Mayan, African and Egyptian artifacts. It was incredible. Apparently it’s the largest private collection in the Midwest. The founder really was a huge collector of animals and antiquities and this is his life’s collection presented in a one-of-a-kind museum.
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| The jackalope makes another appearance. |
The area surrounding the cave and the museum was quite the sight. There were peacocks, marmots and emus - live ones - on the grounds, so we got to hear and see those. There was also tons of junk everywhere - old saws and machinery, wagons and cabins, and just junk everywhere. There were tons of sheds on this property. It was certainly an interesting place to visit and somewhere unlike anything we have seen so far.
After heading out from the museum, we drove into Shoshone. We got distracted by a couple of antique shops, perhaps we were inspired from all the interesting things we saw at the museum! Seamus found his trip souvenir; using money he received from Grandma Susan, he purchased a beautiful suede cowboy hat. Daddy helped negotiate the antique seller down to $25 so Seamus is pleased as punch about his new headwear.
Following Shoshone, we headed down to the Falls, which are supposed to be the Niagara Falls of the West. It was supposed to be the best time of year for them with spring runoff from the snow. They weren’t nearly as big as we expected based on pictures, though they were still incredibly beautiful. The canyon they were in is interesting because it was the site of one of Evil Knievel’s stunts where he attempted to ride a steam powered rocket motorbike from one rim of the canyon over to the other. The stunt was unsuccessful as his parachute malfunctioned and went off right at the beginning of the stunt ruining everything. He ended up riding his rocket motorcycle into the canyon (instead of over it) and landing on the river bank on the far side, apparently sustaining only minor injuries. We think that this is incredible given the size and scale of the canyon that we saw today. It certainly makes for an interesting history of the canyon beyond the waterfalls. We actually got a photo of the ramp that was built for the stunt that you can still see from the top of the canyon.
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| See the dirt ramp on the left side of the cliff? |
Our last stop of the day is our campsite for the night at Billingsley Creek State Park near Hagerman, Idaho. It is a beautiful, brand new state park campground that just opened last fall and it is one of the nicest we’ve been at. We’re really excited because there are free showers, fire pits, water, electric and sewer hookups and most importantly, a little library! We are really living in luxury tonight. Also to note that the weather has completely changed. It went up to 31°C today which feels super hot after being in the mountains for so long. We are all adjusting to the hot temperatures as it now feels like we’re in the middle of summer. Maybe we will be able to get in some swimming tomorrow at one of the many springs in the Hagman area - here’s to hoping.
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