Craters of the Moon may not be a national park, but we had amazing time visiting similar volcanic monuments at Lava Beds in California and Newberry in Oregon. We definitely did not want to miss Craters of the Moon, even though it was rather out of the way.
We talked to the ranger about whether or not we could go into the caves. The Park Service is concerned about the spread of White-nose Syndrome, a contagious condition that kills bats. The ranger told us that we couldn't bring anything into the caves if we had taken it into another cave since 2005. Since 2005, we've visited lava caves in Hawai'i, California, Oregon, Washington, lots of them. Our cameras were new, but our lenses weren't, and they'd also been in the same bags and cases as our old cameras. We decided just to skip the caves, as we only had about two and a half hours, anyway.
There were only a few other visitors to the park. It was quite peaceful, especially compared to Yellowstone.
Lars had told us that he had brought Mark to Craters of the Moon, and that Mark had been very proud that, in spite of the elevation, he had been able to climb to the top of the Inferno Cone. Mark wrote about his visit to Craters of the Moon here.
All of a sudden, up there on top of the Inferno Cone, I suddenly realized what had been wrong with this trip all along. The whole way, we had been inexplicably cranky, easily frustrated, and short-tempered with each other. Now, it came to me. We had had exactly this sort of experience on the way to Mark's memorial, trying to see some very pretty places, but finding ourselves arguing all the time. We were missing Mark. We knew, of course, on some level, that we were missing him, but we weren't expecting it to hit us so hard. But all of the geology--it was Mark who taught us to love geology, to read the Roadside Geology guides, to appreciate all of this stuff. Oh, Mark, if only we could have shared all this with you! I just started to cry.
Just a little seed, and all of this black stuff, but somehow these pioneering plants eventually manage to take root. The seed made me think of new life, and of Maya, my newly-born niece. Mark was still alive when I found out that Maya was on the way, and I remember e-mailing him about the news and his responding from his hospital bed, "Congrauntulations." So, while there is death, there is also birth. I took some comfort in that.
Apparently, not all federal park rangers hate geocaching. The rangers at Craters of the Moon had placed an earth cache in their park. To support their efforts, we wanted to find it.
Other than the ranger cache and the caves, we felt like we had had a very good look at Craters of the Moon. Knowing we were going to have time troubles, we had gotten sandwiches to carry in the car, and ate them for dinner.
It was an exciting end to the trip, but I wished we'd realized what was going on with us emotionally sooner, so we could have enjoyed the rest of the trip more.
Distance hiked: Probably about 2 km