To the Moon

We weren't really feeling our next destination idea and we wanted to go somewhere different so we spent some time zooming in and out on our phones and found Craters of the Moon National Monument. It was at the tail end of the hours we were willing to drive but we decided to go for it. We pulled into the camping area, only one anywhere close to the park, and sealed the plan by taking the last open site. In campsites we were always worried about how loud Roslyn could be while she went down for the night, these campsites were particularly close, but she went down without a peep and we sat in the warm night air and had a beer on the picnic bench. 

Next morning we set out very early to explore before it got too hot. The landscape of this park is surreal. There are lava fields frozen in amazing textures and pillars, big black cinder cones looming over you, and sagebrush growing so lightly on top of the ashes you feel like you could blow them away. There wasn't much vegetation but the shapes, textures, shadows were all fascinating. Another bonus to getting up early was we also had these places to ourselves.

Once it started getting hot we headed to explore the caves. Joshua had never been in any caves so it was fun to experience it with him. We went into 3 caves and 2 were easy entries but the 3rd we almost couldn't find. We had to half crawl into it, work our way down some steep loose rock and then we were all alone in this pitch black cave. It was fun to turn on the headlamps and not know what you would see or how far back it would go. The caves got nice and cold and we played around in them for a bit. I had to warm up to them though. At first they made me a bit scared and I insisted Joshua hold my hand and not leave me.