Posts Tagged With: craters of the moon koa

Craters of the Moon National Monument is in Idaho, but it literally looks like you have just landed on another planet. In fact, we learned by watching the park movie that NASA astronauts actually visited there to train for moon missions in 1969 and later spent time there researching missions to Mars. Is that cool or what?!

Craters of the Moon

This park is very easy to visit as it’s not large and you could easily visit in a day. There is a 7 mile loop drive through the park with plenty of beautiful places to stop and admire the views. You also have the option to hike and explore some caves.

Hiking up Inferno Cone

Our first stop was a short hike up the hill to see Inferno Cone.

The next stop was Spatter Cones and Snow Cones.

Spatter Cones

Our favorite was exploring the caves. The first cave we explored was Indian Tunnel. That is an easy cave to explore if you didn’t bring flashlights. There is plenty of natural light in this cave.

Staircase down into Indian Tunnel

Indian Tunnel

Lots of natural light coming into Indian Tunnel

We went back another evening to explore the dark caves and remembered to bring flashlights.

Some of these caves had some tight spots to squeeze through!

Inside one of the caves there was a lot of ice, and somehow we got a good picture of some of it by shining a flashlight on it.

I’m not gonna lie, it was creepy in those dark caves. The kids loved it and kept wanting to go further into them. I went along with them because I didn’t want them to get lost, but I have to admit I was a little nervous. Sometimes Chris stayed out of the caves just in case someone needed to call for help to come and rescue us. At least that’s his story, and he’s sticking to it. 😉

Craters of the Moon is such a beautiful and unusual place to see and explore!

We stayed at Craters of the Moon KOA in Arco, and I’m sorry to say it was one of the worst RV parks we’ve ever stayed at. I wouldn’t recommend it, however ironically we moved from there to one of the best parks we’ve ever stayed at. Stay tuned for that next.