vacation re-cap days 8-10

Day 8 we broke camp, packed the overloaded Taurus (who knew that it would be our last trip in the old girl?) and drove to Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. Wondering why they call it Craters of the Moon?

Yeah. That's why.

So those are the lava flows, there's a huge cinder cone there and not much else. Not many trees. It's just kind of stark. We arrived in time to start setting up camp & then Mike had to finish on his own because Thomas and I went to the Junior Ranger program. The rangers who put it on were relatively young and pretty passionate about what they do. The guy told about how it was his dream to be a ranger since he went to his first national park as a kid. Really, these people are unsung heroes. They don't make much money, the parks are usually remote so they normally live in pretty crappy on-site housing. They have to love what they do and really have a passion for it.

After the Junior Ranger program, we ate dinner and decided to go to the nighttime program. I turned out to be this couple who had taken a year off, bought a VW campervan, custom painted it with the American Flag and traveled to every single national park -- including Alaska and Hawaii. They gave a little talk and showed a video that was basically a montage of their photos and a whole lotta "This Land is Your Land." It made my inner hippie tear up a little.

The park is in the middle of nowhere. Actually, I think it's several miles from Nowhere. There isn't even the typical right-outside-the-park collection of grocery store, gas station & old motel that you normally find. That combined with there being no big trees to speak of made for the best stargazing ever. I've never seen so many stars. Mike had trouble picking out constellations because there were so many stars. It was crazy. Almost a little disorienting. Mike left the fly off the tent because it was a warm night, especially compared to the nights in Yellowstone & Glacier that we had gotten used to. The top of our tent in mesh, so we fell asleep staring up at the stars until our eyes just couldn't stay open any longer.

In the morning we broke camp and did a little hiking to the lava caves. Thomas loves him some caves and had been really looking forward to that part.

Then it was time to leave. We headed south through Idaho and were planning on making it back home late that night. Until we had a tire blow out 30 minutes south of Pocatello, ID.

At 6 pm on a Sunday evening, no tire store was open, so after we had the car towed someplace, we had the driver drop us at a nearby Rodeway Inn. I'm going to tell you that although my standards for a hotel were pretty low after having been camping for several nights . . . they weren't that low. The place was actually clean, just really old and very poorly maintained - sloppy painting; an air conditioner unit that, although it worked and blew cool air, was undersized and just couldn't cool the room; carpet that wasn't *quite* wall-to-wall - yes, the carpet was like an inch too small on one side of the room. The place was just odd. But it didn't have bedbugs, the bathroom was clean and well, we weren't in a position to be too picky.

Monday Mike got up and was at the tire store before they opened. Got both rear tires replaced & we headed home. A day late, several dollars shorter than planned.