Craters of the Moon

For the night we stayed at Jackson, WY in a remarkably stylish Motel 6 hotel. We had dinner at the Gunbarrel Steakhouse, which was the States former Taxidermy museum. Hence there were a lot of animals on display as well as a small collection of Winchester Rifles. The steaks were huge and juicy, something for red meat lovers.

After a good nights sleep we continued our journey. Today's destination is Boise, Idaho. On our way there we will visit the Craters of the Moon Park. But before we arrived there we actually passed by a site, we weren't aware of: the EBR-1 or Experimental Breeder Reactor #1, which was the first nuclear power plant built by what is today Idaho National Laboratory. The site is somewhat strange, located in the middle of nowhere whith a lot of security on the side of the active location is the EBR-1 itself open to public traffic. But there were only one care and a bike, so we decided not to visit the reactor and move on.

The cities around this site try to get their share of the deal, very similar to Forks, WA, where they exploit the Twilight saga. There is even a restaurant offering an Atomic Burger, which we skipped.... In Arco, ID we came across a Historical Site marker which demonstrated the early years romantic feelings about nuclear power. The marker states that Arco, ID is known for being the first town of the free world to be served by electrical energy developed from the atom.

After another couple of hours drive thru burning Idaho ( a lot of wild fires going on in this part of the state) we arrived at the Craters of the Moon site. This site is a vast ocean of lava flows with scattered islands of cinder cones and sagebrush. As the NPS says a "weird and scenic landscape" where yesterday's volcanic events are likely to continue tomorrow... Despite the "imminent danger" ;-) we decided to explore one of the caves also known as the Indian Tunnel. This was fun, because we had to crawl thur a tunnel. Of course we weren't prepared and didn't have any head lights or torches with us, but we still made it thru. It was fun and helped us to stay dry for a little but, while outside it was raining. One of actually two days of our 3 week long trip where we had rain. All other days were dry and hot.

At night we arrived at Boise, ID which was much livelier than the we expected. Dominated by students and people working for the government it offers a decent downtown experience. In a TexMex restaurant that specialized in Tequila shots we enjoyed dinner and concluded the day.