We also decided it would be an adventure to try camping again with Sara. The camp site at Craters is situated right in the lava field and the lava boulders and ash make up the grounds on which you camp. It was a pretty cool looking place to stay, like being on the Moon I would suppose. From the minute we let Sara out of the car until we left, she remained covered in volcanic ash from head to toe. It was everywhere and we found it pointless to try to clean her up.
Our first adventure, after getting camp set up was hiking up a cinder cone inside the park. The sides were steep but Sara managed to hike some of it herself with a little assistance. There was a great view at the top and we felt the full gusto of the wind that we had been warned about in this park.
Hey, the trees even lean here like they do at home!
After all that walking plus the driving for nearly 4 hours that morning, everyone was ready to return to camp, grab some dinner, take turns going on bike rides, and then go to sleep. One of us stayed behind with Sara and set up the tent while the other of us rode Dan's bike around the whole park and then we switched. By the time I got my turn to ride through the park it was totally dark and I rode by the light of the full moon. The roads were well lit and the cinder cones and various features stood as giant dark shadows in the sky. There were some bats flying overhead. It was a very unique experience.
Later that night was Sara's first camping experience since she was about 6 months old, so more than a year. The camp ground actually filled up and it made me nervous that she'd wake everyone up. Especially since I expected it to be really windy all night and instead you could hear a pin drop it was so quiet. At one point Dan was snoring and it woke Sara up. She stood up in her crib and just kept saying, "Da Da" over and over inquisitively. She never screamed though and as soon as I could get him to turn over and quiet down, she went back to sleep. Also it got down in the 40's which is definitely the coldest she's slept in. I kept covering her all night and she was in warm jammies. It must have worked because she was toasty warm in the morning however I was quite tired.
The next day we got up and actually took a long hike around the park on the edge of the volcanoes. We took lots of pics on this hike. I'll let them speak to the scenery. At the end of the hike we got to hike across a lava flow too.
The last thing we did in the park was go out to the lava caves. They are in the middle of a lava field that you have to hike through that is massive, you can't even see where it ends. There are lava tubes and caves that go down 30 or 40 feet, it's even cold down there!
What a great couple of days in the park, a fun adventure, and a great way to celebrate us!
As an unexpected spur of the moment side trip we decided to stop at the worlds first Nuclear Power plant and take a tour. It was a very interesting if not a little unnerving place to visit. Dan had fun playing with all the exhibits they had set up of mechanical arms that move stuff around and we learned a lot about how they actually produced Uranium at this site. At one point we were standing right over the nuclear reactor chamber. I love the control room photo with all the buttons and old charts.
1 comments:
Cool!
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