Day 07

Today began in the very clean city of Idaho Falls, ID.  With nearly 60,000 people within its city limits, Idaho Falls is the second largest city in Idaho (behind Boise). The main venue for today was the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, which is about 88 miles west of Idaho Falls.

To get to Craters of the Moon, we drove through Idaho National Laboratories (INL), a 570,000 acre facility dedicated to a bunch of stuff - but most of it is nuclear related.  INL is the fifth largest employer in Idaho.  It is a division of the US Department of Energy, and their mandate is something along the the lines of: conduct vital research that allows us to sustain and develop nuclear energy technologies, scale other clean energy technologies, protect critical infrastructure, support national defense and homeland security, bolster cyber security, and make sure nuclear materials do not fall into the wrong hands.

Elephants, camels and giant bison roamed these parts of Idaho

Here's something you might not know about INL: it is the site of the first power plant to produce electricity using atomic power.  The Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 (EBR-I) was operational between December 1951 and December 1963. You can actually still visit EBR-I, and we planned to do so. Unfortunately, we were a few weeks too early as it was not yet open for the season. Yes... there is apparently a nuclear reactor "season".

Here's something else you might not know about INL: it was the site of the world's first (and the U.S.' only) fatal reactor accident. The Army was developing a portable nuclear reactor that could be deployed in remote locations, such as the Arctic, with minimal crew.  The reactor had been operational, but shut down for periodic maintenance.  On 1/3/61, when restarting the reactor, one of the three operators apparently made a very bad mistake and removed a control rod thus causing the reactor to immediately go critical and effectively explode.  It wasn't a nuclear explosion; instead, the reactor overheated so quickly that the water coolant instantly converted to steam and exploded inside the reactor vessel. The vessel, which weighted 26,000 pounds, jumped 9 feet into the air spewing steam, water and bolts. Only the three operators (one of which was a trainee) were at the site, and all three were killed.

Craters of the Moon is a stunning park, and we really just lucked out to visit it. We were planning our trip back home and asked "what's close to Idaho Falls?"  It looked big and close enough... and that's all it took. It is in the high desert and most of the area's annual precipitation of 15" comes in the form of snow during the winter.  Lots of sage brush across wide open plains as you approach the park, and the sage continues into the park as well.  But you can immediately see that this was an area with a history of extreme volcanic activity.  The park is full of lave tubes, cinder cones and lava flows.

Unfortunately, this picture doesn't give a good sense of scale. If you fell into this cone, you'd be about a hundred yards deep and have a hard time getting out any way other than the precarious trail on the left.

The Apollo astronauts in training came to Craters of the Moon to learn to look for and collect good rock specimens in an unfamiliar and harsh environment.

We took the 4 mile North Crater Trail.  Our daily walk back in Amelia is about 3.5 miles, and Angela was confident that this hike would be a breeze.  However, it proved a tad more difficult right off the bat as we climbed about 400 feet up a cider slope. We were a bit out of breath before we even lost sight of the car. In our defense, we were also at over a mile of elevation.  The hike was over lava flows and up more cinder hills. We encountered only two couples on the entire hike - pretty much had the place to ourselves (at least on this hike). The views and landscape are absolutely stunning; it looks like another world.

The volcanic eruptions that gave rise to the features in the park occurred numerous times between 15,000 and 2,000 years ago.  There is still tremendous geothermal activity underneath, and there will be more volcanic activity. Geologists predict that the area will experience its next eruption some time in the next 900 years with the most likely period in the next 100 years.

Our visit to the park in early May [ignore the date stamp on this posting] may have been the perfect to hike.  Winter was letting go of its icy grasp, schools were still in session and the full force of the summer heat was at least a month away.  This last item can be exceptionally discomforting as the heat-absorbing lava rocks can send the surface temperatures up to over 150 F.

After our hike, we drove around the park seeing some of the other sites.  It was then back to Idaho Falls.  Along the way, we stopped in the small town of Arco (pop about 1,000) for lunch.  Arco was the first city in the world to ever be powered by nuclear energy.  We stopped at Taqueria La Costa, a very small Mexican restaurant, at close to 3pm.  This was an "order at the window and then go sit in a booth" type of restaurant. Unbelievably inexpensive (we snuck in just in time on the lunch menu) and mine was very good.  Angela's was just ok.  From what we could tell, the only staff were a woman and her 8-year-old daughter, whose job it was to instruct patrons on how to ring the bell for service. I could eat there four times a week and probably would if I lived in Arco.

This evening was pretty uneventful - just a week's worth of laundry for me. Tomorrow it's off to Yellowstone.