Friday, June 25, 2010

Craters of the Moon National Monument

After the cow incident, I was heading towards something called Craters of the Moon.  My map isn't real detailed and I had no idea what it actually was.  As I was approaching, I saw huge piles of what looked like exploded soil bombs, or freshly tilled rows of dirt.  They were randomly scattered, yet still seemed to be logically layed out.  It actually looked like WWII when the morters went off and blew up sand dunes.  Turns out it is a huge lava field from 2500 years ago.  Much like Hawaii, magma escaped the mantle at various locations and formed lave tubes, caves, cinder cones, flows, and Aa and Pahoehoe *Hawaiin words for "sharp rocky piles of lava," and "smooth flows of lava".  The park had all sorts of features and I spent quite a bit of time there (getting quite burnt in the sun, even with five applications of SPF30 sunscreen that day).

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