29th July 2013 - Twin Falls ID - Kms to date 7,685

Kms today 435

We left the mighty metropolis of Island Park and headed to Ashton for brekkie. It was another ghost town but we eventually found a café that served expresso, but little else.  We had some zucchini bread instead and it was very nice. We then drove south to Idaho Falls and found a Hertz office to register Alan as a driver.
Then it was straight west to the Craters of the Moon National Monument. This is in a region which split open and exuded lava only 2000 years ago so the landscape was very young. We did a drive through the park and climbed a big Fumarole to get the best view of the park. It was a steep climb up the side crunching over sintered rock to find one tree growing on top.

Alan struggling up the hill for the view over Craters of the Moon.

The ground around was covered in very rough lava that looked like it had just spewed out of the volcano.

This is a sample of the pumice that covered the ground.

A ranger showed us the types of rock found in the park but we couldn't explore the lava tubes because we wore the same shoes at Tulelake and could carry the fungus that affects bats in the caves.

The top of one tree hill.

This is the edge of one of the lava flows.

We drove on south through the semi desert with some irrigated fields of corn to Carey for lunch. We found a diner that served “Aussie burgers”! The ladies were very nice and we had a good feed. Then on through more and more irrigated farms to Twin Falls. By the time we got there it was over 40C. I drove to the library to use their computers to pay a couple of bills and send an email to Morag. It was a huge library for a relatively small town.
We had dinner next door and discovered they had draught Guinness!!! We decided it was too hot to visit the Twin Falls tonight and would go tomorrow morning.