Back to the Craters

September 2nd, 2024

I found a spot at Craters of the Moon National Monument. I have stayed here for 7 nights in order to get past the holiday weekend. There will probably be a lot less campers after this 3 day weekend. So far this season I have been very lucky with campsites. I usually plan for campgrounds a couple of weeks or more in advance, but you never know if there will be any vacant sites until you arrive. A few times I have made advanced reservations through http://recreation.gov in order to guarantee a site. So far this year, I have always found an unoccupied site. Hopefully this trend will continue.

It has been a little hazy here, due to a wildfire to the northwest near Stanley. There is no smell of smoke, but landscape photography is degraded. Temperatures have not been bad. The mornings are cool, even cold, and the afternoons warm up.

On the second day, I drove into the town of Arco for groceries. Arco’s claim to fame is that it was the first community to be lighted by nuclear power. This happened for 1 hour back in 1955. A reactor was used by the Argonne National Laboratory from the National Reactor Testing Station just to the southeast (it is now the Idaho National Laboratory).

I hiked the Broken Top Loop trail which circles the youngest volcano in Idaho. There are crazy lava (no longer molten) formations along the trail. This includes huge rolls with caves formed underneath. You can enter and explore in the caves, but you need a pass from the park service, as bats live in the caves and are protected. I don’t like caves, but if you need a pass because of bats, then I don’t need one, as I like bats even less.

Today, Labor Day, marks the unofficial end of the summer camping season for most people. They are returning home to work or school. I walked the two loops of the campground, counting vacant sites. Nine out of ten are empty as of 11:00 a.m. This means that for the the coming weeks of autumn, it will be easier to find campsites during the week. Weekends may still be a problem, but I usually try to arrive at new sites on weekday mornings. In some cases, higher elevation campgrounds may be closed. But some of these will be closed in name only. The water may be turned off and restrooms locked. These are not a requirement for me anyway as long as I can still get into a campsite.

Even though my camping will continue, this last summer holiday feels like an ending. Every day for me is a holiday now, but you can’t erase those special things about a real holiday when you have lived through so many. You looked forward to the day off work, the activities, food, and mostly friends and family. You dreaded returning to work the day after. Maybe some years, you don’t do anything special. But let me tell you, when you are retired and travelling, you feel every holiday as loneliness. If you aren’t careful, a little bit of depression can set in.

Fortunately, I have a handful of friends and family with which I can communicate. I can call them up, or they call me. Sometimes we share a few terse sentences in text messages. My younger son is enjoying Madeira, across the Atlantic. The older is taking his family to the zoo. I can’t be there, but I did send an Apple Pay text to offset some of his cost.

I watch people break down their camping gear, pack, and leave. I dream a little about my next destination. What will I see? Who will I meet? Will the fishing be good? What weather will I run into?

Tomorrow, it will be my turn to leave. I will break camp and head east. I plan to find my next campsite just across the border into Wyoming. This will put me in reach of a day trip to Jackson and Teton National Park, as well as the valley of the Greys River in the Wyoming Range. I’ll explore there a little to see what the trout fishing is like, in preparation for a future trip. After a few days there, I will drop south through the edge of Wyoming and into the mountains of Utah where I once did some backpacking. And, I need a place where the Aspens turn gold. All the while, I will be moving south and west, trying to stay ahead of any freezing fall nights, towards the desert where the winter should not be too harsh.