Idaho National Parks

After driving from Vernal, Utah I spent the night in Twin Falls, Idaho. I picked it because I had been driving for quite a while, with a lot of time stuck in traffick in Salt Lake City. I didn't get to see a couple of places near the city, because of the time I spent sitting in traffic wasting gas. One of the things that can happen when traveling that you have to put up with.

I had noticed the sudden drop off down to the Snake River when I drove into Twin Falls despite the darkness. I stopped at the pullout on my way out of the city, in order to get a look at it. The view from the overlook under the US93 bridge was well worth the stop.

Then it was off to the Hagerman Fossil Beds NM, to see what kind of neat things they had. It took some doing to find the Visitor's Center for the monument. It was in downtown Hagerman, across the street from the high school, not near the actual fossil beds to the east of town.

The visitor's center was somewhat disappointing, while it had some nice fossils and information, it was quite small. And there were no hikes or anything to see the actual workings in the field. There was a hike in the fossil bed area that ran along part of the Oregan Trail. I wasn't up for a 6 mile hike with no water in the hot weather.

One thing that was compelling at the center was the information about the Minidoka Internment Camp. It is temporarily housed in the Hagerman Fossil Bed Visitor's Center while they work on getting the original site put together for the National Monument.

I headed to the Crater of the Moon National Monument mostly because the name intrigued me. I didn't look up any information about it online or elsewhere, just so I could be surprised. And I was, by how familiar it looked. When I saw the lava along the rode, I couldn't figure out where it had came from, since I couldn't remember any volcanoes in the area.

The exhibits at the Visitor's Center explained thing very well. There is a volcano in the area, a famous one: The Yellowstone super-volcano. It had erupted many times over the life of the earth, creating the Snake River Plain in Idaho. Left over hotspots from the Yellowstone volcano caused what are called rift eruptions. There have been several such eruptions, the most recent about 2,000 years ago.