Went to lunch at Bugatti's this week with Jenn, Bev, and Jessica, mainly to discuss final plans for the Young Women's High Adventure. Mostly discussed menus.
And, with the end of the school year looming, we all went to a Grand Event at Holcomb with grandchildren and their mothers.
Here is Dad reading to Ruby and Janie. Dad is such a good reader.
Logan is a good reader too. Somehow he is reading a book (purchased at the book fair) to Jude who is pulling him in the wagon. They made several circumnavigations around the hose in this activity.
Thursday morning we left for Idaho to attend the wedding of Maren Symons and Colton Bullock. By the time we got to Arlington, we were starving and stopped at the Pheasant Grill for lunch.
It was a classic little town's restaurant with lots of colorful people filling the dinning room. The food was tasty too, but the incredibly slow service negated all the good points.
We continued east on I 84 until we got to Mountain Home and then headed north with the intention of visiting the Craters of the Moon National Monument on Friday.
The scenery was beautimous - wide vistas, forbidding clouds, and a cache or two along the way.
We spent the first night at a rest stop at the junction for Sun Valley
Friday morning at about 10 am we arrived at Craters of the Moon National Monument. We went to the visitors center - watched a movie, learned more about volcanoes and lava, and cinder cones than we ever thought possible. Almost bought a plush Jackrabbit animal, but the attached card said a jackrabbit is a hare and not a rabbit, so we left it there on the display rack (sniff...not really) One of the displays I liked was this poem about lichens. Lichen are so small and inconspicuous that most people don't even notice them, but the are the beginning of new environments.
There is a really nice 7-mile loop road to follow with turnouts and trails to take one to see the interesting sights. We did them all, except one which involved acquiring a permit and crawling through caves with flashlights.
Looks just like the sign!
This is a Limber Pine whose trunk is very limber.
Good training for the Enchantments.
Great views from the top.
Splatter cones happen when lava puffs out of the volcano but doesn't get blown far away.- the lava blobs come up and then kinda drop on the edge of the volcano and build up the edge.
We're in the cone here - you can see the upper edge which looks like it's made of hardened lava blobs.
There were lots of holes in the surface which were big enough to put one's hand into - like Dad is doing.
Yep - this was a small cone with snow in the bottom - a 'snow cone'.
Ahhhh - nope to a two + mile trail through a lava field.
We took this 2-mile RT to a place where there were tree molds. Here the lava flowed around a tree which obviously died, and in the 2000 years since then, has ashed away. It was a nice trail, and we happily anticipated seeing the tree mold(s).
Dad kept being distracted by flowers he saw along the trail.
Yes - there in the distance - you can see a sturdy steel post marking the tree mold.
And .... ta-dah....the tree mold. Very anticlimactic. We've seen much better at Ape Cave near Mt St Helen. Yeah - don't bother with this one.
Devil's Orchard was mainly an area where big chunks of a volcano's rim had burst off in an explosion and then had floated away along with the molten lava. It should have been interesting but, it started to rain, and we "bailed". Dad looks like he has rain drops on his head, doesn't he. Alsa a grumpy face.
We left Craters of the Moon and headed east on the way to Idaho Falls. We stopped at Arco to looked for a geocache. The hint said, "look under the container." Okay, that thing looks like a big container of something and under it, sure enough, was the cache.
Mostly, what was weird was that there was this submarine sail in this little park. Weird because there is no water suitable for a submarine here in Arco, Idaho!
We were to soon find out the story - more of the story than we really wanted to hear, Walking down a little hill at a brisk pace, and heading straight towards us, came this little man who said, "I can give your a tour of the Idaho National Laboratory and Atomic Energy Museum!!!!" I think we made his day.
This guy had made his career in the navy and told us that he was on a ship in the Pacific in 1946 (that would probably make him about 93 or 94) While standing at the bow he looked down at the water saw a torpedo whizzing through the water, luckily missing hitting his ship. Apparently Idaho is the center of lots of atomic energy stuff and some admiral came one day to tour the facilities and said he'd send the sail of a nuclear submarine and it could be used as a museum and tourist attraction in Arco. That was probably a good idea because the is not much of anything in Arco.
He showed us the container which was one which was (or could be) used to transport wasted nuclear material. Now, of course, it is the location of one of Arco's threee geocaches.
He gave us the full tour of the little museum which is about the size of Bev's little storage unit. There were maps, and books, and pictures, and old navy memorabilia. Actually, it was quite interesting and gave this guy something worthwhile to do in his retirement,
We headed on toward Idaho Falls and stayed at a rest stop just about 15 minutes south of the Idaho Falls Temple. There are almost always geocaches at rest stops and we quickly found this one which was interestingly in a big steel pipe on the corner of a building and held up by big rocks. There was also a interpretive trail that went through lava beds....but we'd had plenty of lava for the day already.
Saturday morning, bright and early at 9:30, we were at the Idaho Temple
It was kinda strange going to a Temple Wedding where we only knew the bride and groom. We recognized the groom's parents because we'd seen pictures of them, and they greeted us like long lost relatives. But no one else said anything to us. And in a bit, two sister missionaries we had know in Astana came into the sealing room too - so we weren't lonely anymore.
And pictures afterwards, as usual.
Maren Symons and Colton Bullock
Everyone was invited to an all you can eat pizza place for lunch. Here we are with four of the missionaries from Astana and one spouse.
Jacob Studer, Kasenia Peterson Studer, Hanna Cantrell, Maren Symons, Colton Bullock, and us.
The reception wasn't until 7 pm so we went to Chris and Kyna's home and surprised them with a visit. It was fun. We stayed for about an hour and talked about how good Oregon City First Ward had been. They plan to move back in about a year after Chris retires. Unfortunately I took no photos.
Then we went to two Winco stores and bought all of the Dr Pepper 10 in the Idaho Falls and Pocatello stores. Now Warren has a stash to last him a few more months.
Headed to the church building, where, once again, we knew only five people. We especially enjoyed watching the video showing Maren and Colton as they grew from infants to adults.
Our destination for the night was a rest stop near Bliss. We figured this location was just the right distance away from Oregon City, that we could leave at 7 am and be back home in time for the Sunday night activities at the church.
We found more geocaches along the way.
We got home just in time to go to Drew Pedersen's Eagle Scout Ceremony.
And after that we attended Mark Pedersen's fireside where he told all about his mission. I was either too tired or too warm (room was really hot) that I totally zoned out and took no photos.
At one of the rest stops we saw this sign. I am going to write for the booklet and start making plans to go on this part of the Oregon Trail! Hopefully you can do it in a pickup truck with a camper!
