Through Idaho 29&30 Sept

We have seen so much in the last few weeks that we are feeling quite exhausted and overwhelmed with it all. So we decided to have a couple of quiet days. We went to a small university town called Rexburg where we could visit a bookshop (Tris bought 4 books, 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' and sequels, and has read them all already) and went to see a film, '9', in the cinema (which was actually quite scary in places!) The only other thing of any significance that happened that day was our saving a snake in a car park! We parked the van in a new road that had been built for a new housing development and slept through a hugely windy and cold night.
In the morning we drove westwards with snow capped mountains appearing in the distance. Snow came beating down on us as we drove higher and higher and then along a high, dry, windswept glacial plain between the mountains. We visited Craters of the Moon National Park where there is a lava field about 50 miles by 50 miles across. It is a place where lava erupts about every 2000 years (the last time about 2000 years ago!) and is connected to the same system that Yellowstone is on. The Earth's crust has slowly been moving Westward here whilst the system stays still so there are many old craters spread over 100s of miles. There is a fault line under the Craters of the Moon park so in this one place several eruptions have taken place and the ground looks like nowhere else. There are large craters, lava tubes and splatter cones (where the last little bits of lava splutter out of the ground and fall to the ground building up a cone around the exit point). It is a desolate place with new life just trying to get a hold, on the ash and pumice like rock, and only sometimes succeeding. Lichen is the first to take a foot hold and then it can break down the rocks and allow other plants to take a hold, but sometimes the ash gets its own back as you can see from the photos. After the snow the whole place smelt a bit like a wet fireplace, it was beautiful and awesome but also a bit spooky (especially inside the huge lava tunnel that we explored by torchlight).
Now we are in a campground in a town called Mountain Home. The sun came out as we drove here but we are told it is going to be another cold one tonight! And we thought we were going to be following the sun...