The Vangclear Files: Westward 2014: Of Craters and Potaters

Craters of the Moon is a national park in Idaho. And it was supposed to be the end all be all of our weekend. A little conversation in the car changed that. Tommy (one of the guys with us) was like so if we’re driving 4 hours to Craters that means we’re really close to Yellowstone right? Why not go? And thus the weekend turned epic!

But first I got to see Idaho! Everyone in the car was laughing at me because I was ecstatic to be in Idaho. I mean hey I’d never been. So naturally the first thing we had to do was see the Idaho Potato Museum!

It was adorable and old school…

And I did learn a few things about potatoes. Like did you know that potatoes are sorted into 2 types? The Number 1 potatoes are the pretty ones you buy at the super market. While the Number 2 potatoes are the ugly ones that get cut into French fries and potato chips.

These are Number 2's:

And these are Number 1's::

And did you know the earliest known potatoes were found in the mountains of South America as early as 400 BCE? Or that in 1536 Spanish Conquistadors discovered the potatoes in Peru and brought them back to Europe?

Or that there were so many tater mashers!?

After a walk about in the museum it was back to the car and off the Craters of the Moon!

In short I spent hours walking on lava!

In the long version as paraphrased from the National Park Site…Craters of the Moon formed during eight major eruptive periods between 15,000 and 2,000 years ago. During this time the Craters of the Moon lava field grew to cover 618 square miles (1600 square km.). Over the past 30 million years, this region has experienced extensive stretching. In the 1983 Mount Borah earthquake, Mount Borah, got a foot (.3m) higher when a magnitude 6.9 earthquake occurred across the base of the Lost River Range and the Lost River Valley dropped about 8 feet (2.4 m.). The stretching of the crust releases pressure on the hot rocks below causing them to melt. The magma can then travel to the surface along planes of weakness like the Great Rift. As long as these forces continue to act, more eruptions will eventually occur. The time between eruptive periods in the Craters of the Moon Lava Field averages 2,000 years and it has been more than 2,000 years since the last eruption. The volume of past eruptions suggests that slightly over one cubic mile (4.2 cubic km.) of lava will be erupted during the next event.

And Craters of the Moon is a HUGE national park! It is over 1,100 square miles (over 750,000 acres) which is roughly the size of Rhode Island. The young lava flows that make up the bulk of the Monument and Preserve can clearly be seen from space.

Something really cool that I did learn was that the plates shift over the core and the hot spot that now presides under Yellowstone, that formed Yellowstone, is the same hot spot that created Craters of the Moon. So the weekend was really cool for me to think that I stood on the past and the present of the ‘Yellowstone Hot Spot’. They were formed thousands of years apart and I walked through both of them on the same weekend.

First stop… The North Creator Flow Trail

Then The Devil’s Orchard…

And the I hiked 0.2 miles (0.3km) up Inferno Cone which was 164 feet (50 m). It was a bit tough…

But so worth it!

See that parking area in the middle of the picture... that's where we're hiking back too.

After the climbing it was time to go spelunking!

The walk out to the caves was a little over a mile.

This is a Lava Tube! Lava rivers become lava tubes when the exterior of a flow cools. the lava can continue to flow until the source of lava gets cut off leaving being a "cave". We were standing on the Blue Dragon lava flow and hiking in the cakes it left behind.

And we weren’t exactly prepared for cave exploration so we used out cell phone flashlights. I enjoyed the reprieve from the scorching heat since the caves were nice and cold.

First the Boy scout Cave which has ice year round. We got to see "lavacicles" and icicles. I'm not sure why it's called the Boy Scout Cave.