On June 23rd, we left for Arizona to attend my brother Matt's wedding.

Mom and Dad were with us, with Dad (the truck driver) the designated

driver. About an hour after leaving town, Dad asked if wanted to make a slight detour and see the Shoshone Ice Caves and/or the Craters of the Moon Monument. We ended up not seeing the ice caves. We stopped there and discovered that there was quite a wait for the 2-hour tour. We decided instead to save that for a weekend trip and head on to Craters of the Moon.

(Mom, Dad, Emmalee and Ryan)
Many, many years ago, when I was in the fourth grade, our class
took a three-day, two-night bus trip around the state. One of the stops was
Craters of the Moon. I remember being amazed by the vast quantity of
lava there. As we were entering the monument, there's quite a bit of vegitation. It's amazing that the plants would grow with little or no dirt.

The ground at this point was made up of little lava pebbles.

It was covered with the white flowers above and the pink

flowers below. Gorgeous!

Pink flowers everywhere

This was at an inferno cone overlook.

Ryan and Emmalee asked if they could climb this...they went all

of the way to the top. It was quite the climb.

Nice workout!

Once we were in the park, it was lava as far as the eye could see.

There are over 1/2 million acres of lava here.

Our family

We discovered that there were caves out along this pathway.

Luckily, the summer has been mild. During a normal (hot) summer, the surface temperature at the monument can be 150 degrees!

We found "Indian Tunnel." You have to climb down into the cave and then travel 800 feet under ground to the exit. Bob, the kids and I went though.

It was amazing how cool it was inside. Some people believe that

the local Indian tribes would travel to this tunnel to escape the heat.

As we were leaving, we tried to imagine walking across miles of

hot lava while barefoot...we were pretty glad that we live when we do.

the exit

next stop::Bryce Canyon