After leaving Yellowstone, we traveled over to the much less visited Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve near Arco, ID. This park was much smaller and did not have active volcanic activity, but it did show much more different types of volcanic activity with frozen lava flows and many cinder cones and lava tubes.
This is Michelle exiting a lava tube which is essentially a cave where lava once flowed, but when it receded, it left these caves you can explore. You had to carefully scramble over many lava rocks to get out of here.
We stayed at the Mountain View RV Park in Arco. They have an onsite restaurant where we enjoyed some good BBQ. The park isn't too far to the west.
The town of Arco has the distinction of being the first city in the world to be powered by atomic energy.
Here is the inside of one of the lava tubes. You need to careful because some of these surfaces are sharp. Watch your head!
This shows the ceiling of one of the lava tubes.
The eeriest part of this park are the landscapes where lava once flowed on the surface, leaving heavily textured remnants.
The lava tubes are collapsing over time due to erosion of the roofs of the caves so some have openings at the top.
The textures of the flows varied in places. Here you see how this was once molten lava.
This whole park is essentially made of black rocks (basalt). With the high elevation and decent temperatures, it still warmed up with the sun's heat absorbed into the rocks.
This shows a larger cinder cone you can walk to the top to see 360 degree views of the whole park.
More lava flows and cinder cones in the distance.
This was a cone you could take a short hike to look down in the cone that was about 30 ft deep to the bottom. Now we head to Utah to ride another HoF Rail Trail near Park City. Check my next post for details on how that went.
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