Craters of the Moon and Sawtooth National Forest

We’ve had a relaxing few days sampling some of the offerings of Idaho. We hiked and camped in Craters of the Moon National Park — the landscape is strikingly different from anything that we’d ever seen before. It was easy to see why the Apollo astronauts did some of their moon training here. Quinn got a kick out of the volcano cones and lava rock. There was even one cone that had snow inside it (dubbed the “Snow Cone” — no kidding). He still wants to see molten lava — not sure how we’ll pull that off but perhaps there’s an active volcano in Costa Rica or something that will give us a glimpse at some point.

We also drove north through and camped in Sawtooth National Recreation Area. We didn’t take nearly enough photos of this beautiful area, and we will definitely put this place on our list of future places to explore more later on when we’re ready to settle down again. It was idyllic with steep mountains descending into the lush Salmon river valley and we felt our batteries recharge during our time there.

Now we are in Missoula, Montana, on our way up to Alberta, Canada. It is HOT here and there are wildfires burning just west of town. We spent the morning catching up on email using the free wifi available in the city’s very nice riverfront park.