Oh look I remember how to blog!
On Saturday morning despite me feeling completely crappy, we were determined to go camping. It was the 4th of July, Independence Day, and Dan never gets Saturdays off from work so we had to take advantage of it.
My sister was texting me all day from her adventure with our mum and her kids at the beach where it was 34 Celsius. I converted our temperature and it was about the same.
Stopped at the Greek restaurant in Logan for lunch. It was nice to have falafel!
Dan had the beef shawarma with Green lemon rice.
Oh hey it's Mr. Cupcake in Idaho!
We went to a campsite called Gravel Creek. Small campground, not many campers, stinky bathroom, and
all of the mosquitoes in Idaho were there. Despite our 25% DEET Deep Woods Off, we both now suffer with at least three dozen bites a piece. The nice thing though was that there were No Fireworks Allowed and, given that it was the 4th of July, that was precisely what we wanted.
We love our truck tent.
Everywhere we went, we left just before the rain hit. Also: on our route we popped into Wyoming for a minute. I bought lottery tickets! Maybe we will win $70 million! (FYI there is no gambling in Utah).
Here we are at the Craters of the Moon! This was a pretty awesome place. No mosquitoes! Sort of windy! It's nice to see lots of people still tenting.
We started on a walk around the big crater. Pretty spectacular scenery. This area saw lots of volcanic activity between 14mya and 2,100 years ago. Nothing much grows now, lots of different types of igneous volcanic rock. Obligatory goofy Dan and Stacey photo:
This trail was 3.5 miles. We didn't know that when we started. Word to the wise: if you plan to hike on volcanic rock, DO NOT wear sandals. Unless you like blisters and having flesh-piercing rocks lodge themselves into your sweaty feet and crying.
Lots of tiny desert plants growing in just a few spaces.
Once was molten lava.
Lava lava
Dan says this is a lava tube. His dad Paul was a radio astronomer before he retired and spent some time working on Hawaii. They have volcanoes there, so when Dan visited all those years ago, he learned really a lot about volcanoes and was thus an excellent tour guide for this.
Because why wouldn't you wear a saucy sun dress while hiking on volcanic rock in sandals?
We got to the end of this trail and it was nowhere near the beginning. We didn't have the map with us. My phone only had 23% and GPS could not locate us. So we just started walking to where we thought the campground was. We discovered later that we took a wrong turn and instead of 2 miles back, it was four. So we had just done 3.5 miles and my feet were already sliced up from the rocks getting in my sandals, Why not walk for another 80 minutes? Lucky there were no bugs, the weather was fine, and we made it back to camp before the sun set. Dan made us an excellent dinner and we joyfully went to bed expecting a good sleep.
We had the highest spot in the campground. Awesome view, but now we know that it is also subject to the most wind. The fly to our tent was flapping much of the night, right in our ears, so we didn't get much sleep after all.
The best coffee is the coffee you make when camping.
Who needs blocks when you can just use nearby random materials to level your truck? Dan is a pro at this.
I almost forgot to take photos of Mr. Cupcake.
Farewell Craters of the Moon!
