Day 32 / 365

Yesterday, I wound up spending much more time in Craters of the Moon as I had anticipated. I found the park so interesting that I ended up hiking all the trails, and exploring the caves and lava tubes until past sunset. Hence, I spent the night at the Lost River Motel in Arco as I was too tired to keep driving any further. Arco is a small town of barely more than a thousand inhabitants, but it is a well cared for place and has an interesting history. It was named after Georg von Arco of Germany, who would later become the lead engineer of Telefunken (produced radio vacuum tubes). More interesting, however, is the fact that it was the first community in the entire world to be lit by electricity generated from nuclear power on July 17, 1955, powered by a reactor of the nuclear power plant I had visited yesterday. Wikipedia tells me that on January 3, 1961 the SL-1 reactor melted down, causing three deaths. It was the world's first (and the U.S.' only) fatal reactor accident. There was no mention of this in the self guided tour yesterday, and I am happy to report that I did not glow in the dark either.

There aren't too many exciting photos to share today since it was mostly a driving day. Originally, I had toyed with the idea of venturing all the way to Washington, because I would have loved to see the Palouse Falls. I decided to save that for a later time, when I would have more time than a week, otherwise I spend the entire time sitting in my car. Thus, I started the trip back in the direction of Wyoming, to enter Yellowstone through the West Entrance this time.

Lunch was spent sitting on a rock overlooking the waterfalls in Idaho Falls, which seems to be a pretty attractive small city. It has a historic downtown, and the falls run right through the middle of the city, with the Mormon temple as the backdrop. Unfortunately, it was a blue cloudless sky, and the sun so bright that it made it unfit for photography, as the bright light washes out all of the detail of the water streams.

It was in Idaho Falls that I came across an entire city block full of flags for Independence Day celebrations. I had to pull over and take a photo - I had never seen so many flags in one place! I thought Canadians are openly patriotic (which they definitely are compared to Germans) but it is nothing compared to the Americans. No matter how small the town, even if it only consists of a gas station and a post office, it has a higher population of flags than people. There are so many, in fact, you would think the US Economy could keep going on flag sales alone!

Idaho's license plate proclaims "Famous for Potatoes", so I supposed  it is only fitting to include a photo of a potato field. My parents also grow their own potatoes, and it was neat to see that the large scale farming of potatoes looks no different than what my parents have going on.

One of my favourite photos from this trip is that of an albino Elk fawn. It was so very little and laid near a tree, perfectly lit up by the afternoon sun.

I love how the sun lights up the little pink ears, the long lanky legs are stretched out, and you can even see the pale blue eyes. The incidence rate of albino Elks is only about 1 in 6 million, and sadly they are not able to reproduce.

Admittedly, I (willingly) made a stop at the ultimate tourist trap, Bear World , because they had 6 bear cubs, all less than 6 months old. Two of the black bear cubs were quite rambunctious and kept on wrestling with each other, it was so adorable. One interesting tid bit I was not aware of was the fact that bear cubs only weigh about 1/2 pound when they are born.

Some random strange looking bird, a member of the chicken family I would assume. *It's called a Guinea Fowl*

And to end the day, a beautiful sunset just past Yellowstone's West Entrance. This one you are going to want to CLICK ON for a larger version.