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.

Day 31 / 365

Today I allowed myself the luxury of sleeping in, since I had stayed in Blackfoot overnight, which has no particular sunrise spots in proximity. Mostly, I just needed some time to sleep, since getting up around 5am for sunrise and going to bed past midnight every day is starting to take its toll and I end up napping in the middle of the day on some random parking lot.

I drove the rather boring, completely non scenic drive towards Arco, which is on the way to Craters of the Moon National Monument, my destination for the day. Just as I thought I could not stand looking at any more sage brush steppe and was seriously doubting venturing into Idaho at all, I came across a sign that indicated the world's first nuclear power plant was just ahead, and it's open for free tours. It peaked my interest and definitely beat staring at sage brush, and so I stopped in. The self guided tour is quite well done, and you can walk about freely and touch pretty much everything.

First stop was the control room. On the right is an old image with scientists manning the control room. On the left is one of the control boards.

As always, CLICK ON IMAGES to see a larger version.

On December 20, 1951 these four light bulbs were the first to ever be lit by electricity generated from nuclear power. The next day, the reactor began supplying all the electrical power for the entire building.

This explains where the word SCRAM comes from.

This is a zero power nuclear reactor that was used in the same facility, but for the purpose of scientific experiments only. One of the main aims of this facility was also to develop a nuclear powered airplane jet engine. Although they developed a working prototype, which is displayed on the parking lot outside, it never became a working model due to its impracticability.

Craters of the Moon was not too much further, and I arrived there during the early afternoon. It lies in the Snake River Plain, and only gets about 20 inches of precipitation per year. It was blistering hot, especially when touching the rock with bare skin. One of the signs said that it gets up to 65 degrees Celsius in the summer. 65! That must feel like you are boiling alive, I can't even imagine what that would be like, and definitely would not care to experience it either.

The Craters of the Moon is a lava field that was created when lava erupted from the Great Rift volcanic zone as recently as 2,000 years ago. The lava field just sits in the middle of desert steppe and seems entirely out of place. The most interesting and bizarre trees grow there, which makes for an oddly ghostly world, especially when you are only one of few people who actually hike the trails and step off the road.

This one is from a place in the National Monument called Devil's Garden, which was named such due to the bizarre shapes of the trees and rocks in this area. Mistletoe causes the tree to send more nourishment to the tree's infected area, resulting in these overly branched segments.

It's a bit difficult to really convey how bizarre (how many times can I say 'bizarre' in a single blog post?!) the landscape there seems, since it is a combined impression in addition to it just being in the middle of sage brush plain and right at the base of the foothills of the mountains. There is a cinder cone one can hike up on - it is completely flat on the top and allows for a 360 degree view of the entire area. Apparently, as one New Yorker commented, I am in wicked shape for hiking up the 157m trail with 53m elevation gain without even stopping! Imagine that! 157m! WITHOUT stopping! 

What is also really pretty about this area is that all of the cinder coned hills are covered in tiny wildflowers. While they just look like a field of white pebbles from afar, they are quite intricate up close.

There are 5 caves in this park, of which I went into Dew Drop Cave, Buffalo Cave, and Beauty Cave. The caves and lava tubes were created by lava flow as the outside of the lava cooled off while the inside kept on flowing. So essentially when you stand in the cave, you stand where red hot lava once flowed. This is a photo of the Beauty cave entrance from the inside, with my first attempt at light painting.

The Buffalo cave lies right underneath here.

There are many different types of lava here.

Plants growing directly on lava rock always fascinates me, it seems like such a contradiction.