Day 14- June 6- Craters of the Moon

We have had a frustrating start with the camper, even though that has not slowed us down from having fun.  We have had issues getting the power from the truck to charge the battery, which means that we can't do some of the dry camping (without power) that we have wanted to do.  We detoured to City of Rocks National Reserve which is in Southern Idaho.  We have made several small detours to some of these smaller National Sites or Monuments or Reserves and it is always find it to be interesting to see how unique all of them were.  The mountains in Idaho are breathtaking and they surround all of these pastures and rolling hills.  We stayed at Castle Rock campground last night after quite the adventure to find it.  Due to all of the camper issues, I forgot to take a picture of our site and the beautiful surrounding mountains.  

This morning, I got up and took the boys to the tour City of Rocks while David stayed and worked on the camper.  I loved the view from the Visitor Center with the mountains in the background.  

Yesterday, we had to ask the rangers where the name Capitol Reef came from.  That was not the case when we drove into the City of Rocks.  Once you crossed over the mountains, there were all of these rocks that just seemed to pop up out of nowhere.  

 The most popular activities here were rock climbing, camping and horseback riding.  We wish we had more time to be able to explore, but we knew we had to get going in case we could find someone to look at the camper.

We made a stop in Twin Falls, Idaho to purchase some supplies to replace the weight distribution hitch bracket.  While there, we got some information about the wiring in the camper and David thinks that he can fix it when we get to the campground.  On our way to the campground, we saw the sign below-  Not a sign you see in Georgia :)

We dropped the camper off at our campsite in Bellvue, Idaho and then headed to Craters of the Moon National Monument.  This is another one that is so unique.  There were many areas where the lava had hardened and settled into the valley beneath all of these gorgeous snow capped mountains.  

We were not sure we were going to get to do this when we had issues with the camper, but everything works out for a purpose.  We climbed Inferno Cone which was a 0.4 mile hike straight up hill, but then we got to come back down hill.  The view from the top- WOW! 

The material on this hike was very grainy.  We told the boys they should practice running up it to get in shape for football! 

In that fine grainy dirt throughout the park, there were thousands of tiny flowers growing.  The ranger told us that there was not a better time to visit for the flowers than this time of year.  

The other thing that amazes us at these small national monuments and areas to visit is how many people are stopping to visit like we are.  The campground here was full.  It was almost so ugly that it was pretty with the views of the lava and the mountains and there were 30 cars in the parking lot.  How blessed we have been to visit so many unique areas.