"Dubbed the "strangest 75 square miles of North America" by an early visitor, the Craters of the Moon National Monument offers one of the west's most unusual displays of volcanic phenomena. The park covers a large valley pockmarked with volcanic cones, lava flows, and other bizarre volcanic features.
There are several fascinating caves which may be explored within the park. The caves are actually "lava tubes". The tubes are formed during large flows of Pahoehoe lava. This liquid form of lava cools very quickly when exposed to the air and develops a crust. The interior lava is insulated and flows within the crust creating tunnels. Since the lava is also gaseous, explosions collapsed the tunnels in places, creating openings through which today's visitors may enter."
Very difficult to show the beauty of this place - as most of the area looks like coal/slag heaps!!!
Have taken some close up pics of the lichen and the lava.
Amazingingly, white saxifrage type plants grow on miles and miles of lava 'dust' ground ....
Of course the obligatory pics from the car, a snapshot of the hundreds of miles of open flat terrain showing sage brush and prairie grass!!!
Couple of pics of huge trucks....
Yes - we did climb down into the Indian Tunnel - a huge lava tube 50ft wide, 30ft high and 800ft long!!!
We scrambled our way through most of it - but refrained from crawling over the last pile of rocks and squeezing through a "small opening"!!
The Butte in the back ground is 30 miles away
He's in the hole but he didn't dig this one!
There's no Bxxxdy Indians down here!
Hay there!!!
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