West to Idaho, South to Utah

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We had a great time in Grand Teton National Park, but it is time to move on. We have the month of September to work our way south to Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta. But before heading south, we had one more place we wanted to see that is pretty much due west of Jackson - Craters of the Moon National Monument near Arco Idaho. The shortest route would be to head over Teton Pass. But we had driven part of that route the other day in the Jeep and realized it probably wasn’t a great idea. Plus we met a couple at Gros Ventre that had driven that route with their truck and Airstream and had suggested we avoid it. Our 190 mile route took us south of Jackson towards Alpine WY before crossing into Idaho and following US-26 to Idaho Falls. It was a pretty drive with much of it in a valley with the Snake River. Once thru Idaho Falls, the scenery changes drastically to barren high desert. It isn’t a very pretty area of the country and seems to have a lack of population as well.

Overlooking Snake River

Rest Stop Along Snake River

We rolled into the Arco KOA on a Sunday afternoon and were surprised to see it was very crowded. Then we remembered this was Labor Day Weekend. That’s why we had reserved a spot here seven weeks ago. We arrived in time to make it to the afternoon ice cream social and met some of the fellow campers. Like us, the people staying here have one planned activity: to visit Craters of the Moon. Although on our drive into Arco, we had seen a billboard for something called “EBR-1 Atomic Museum”. We investigated the place and found it is a National Historic Landmark dedicated to the experimental breeder reactor developed in the early 1950’s to produce electricity from atomic energy. We thought it sounded interesting and we got lucky, the place is open for tours between Memorial Day and Labor Day. There is a hillside in Arco with large numbers painted all over the side of it. Back in 1920, the graduating class of the local high school decided to paint their year on the side of this hill and the tradition continues today. Next year will start to repeat and I wonder whether the old "20" will just be repainted?

Graduation Hill

The next morning, we took the 20 mile drive to the museum. It is definitely in the middle of nowhere. I suppose for good reason since the museum is actually the former facility where the reactor was built and tested. We got there shortly after it opened and were the only visitors there. The facility was in use back in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. One of the workers greeted us and asked if we wanted to do the self guided tour or have a tour guide. We figured we would get more out of the tour by having a personal guide. Unlike many places like this where the person giving the tour is a volunteer and doesn’t have very deep knowledge in the subject matter, our tour guide knew her nuclear physics. We started with a lesson on uranium and plutonium and how the reactor created heat from the fission process. This heat was then transferred to a closed loop of liquid metal and that loop to a second loop which then heated the water to make steam to drive the turbine.

World's First Nuclear Power Plant

View from Parking Lot at EBR-1

The control room was quite fascinating. In the old style grey equipment racks were a plethora of switches, knobs, dials, analog gauges and chart recorders. It’s like stepping back into a time when engineers used slide rules and log tables.

Lots of Temperature and Pressure Readouts

Control Room

As we continued our tour we stood on top of the reactor chamber and were told how the fuel rods were handled before, during and after use in the reactor. Since this was a first of its kind facility, there were special rooms for handling the various radioactive elements. The scientists would stand outside the room looking thru lead glass windows with 34 panels of glass to block the radiation but allow them to see what they were doing. Special electromechanical arms were operated from outside the room while moving the arms and grabbers inside the room to conduct the experiments. They even had a replica of these contraptions where visitors can see if they can move various shaped blocks from a pile into the corresponding shape hole. I tried it and found it to be quite challenging. Hard to imagine what it would be like to conduct “real” work with these things.

View from Second Floor Overlook

Team Signatures from 1951

Control Arms for Chamber

As we continued on the tour, we saw how four light bulbs were used to test that electricity was being generated. On December 20, 1951 the bulbs we first lit and the following day, the whole facility was powered by the breeder reactor. One of the original light bulbs is on display but our tour guide says the location the other three is uncertain. As we came down a set of stairs, our tour guide pointed out the most “dangerous” room in the whole building. One might expect the danger to be some sort of remaining radioactive materials but behind a plexiglass door are asbestos covered pipes that were part of the heat exchange system. On the way back to the car, we checked out two large pieces of equipment and found they were prototypes for nuclear engines for aircraft. Based on their size, those would need to be some huge planes! This was a great stop for us. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but for a couple of engineers, we really enjoyed it and were glad we got in on the last day of the season.

The Four Test Lights

One of the Original Bulbs

Asbestos Hazard Room

Prototype Nuclear Engines for Aircraft

After lunch, we headed up a valley north of Arco to the town of Mackay. The destination was a tour of the old Mackay mines in the mountains to the west of town. Chris had found a description and map of a self guided tour route with 19 stops to see some of the old mine relics. There are several miles of dirt road suitable for low clearance vehicles and a few more miles designated for high clearance or ATVs. We figured the Jeep should be able to handle much of the tour route. Since we are starting in a valley and heading into the mountains the route is mostly uphill. We missed the left hand turn for stop #1 in our haste to head up the road but since it should have been the first stop, here’s what you’ll find. The smelter building were down not far from the town. The ore would be moved down here from the mines up in the mountains for processing. There are a couple remaining buildings and a few outdoor exhibits. The corrugated steel building appear to have been used as targets for yahoos with guns over the years. There are interesting light patterns produced by the large number of holes. It looks like the building are locked at night but opened for visitors during the day. One building would have stored the locomotive for the train but now houses a 1928 GMC truck. Outside is a large tracked shovel that could use a paint job.

1928 GMC Truck

Old Shovel from Mine

The larger building holds all sorts of displays and there are enough signs to help interpret what it is we are looking at since many of the tools are unfamiliar to us. It does a good job of helping us to understand how the mining operations worked back in the day.

Displays in Main Building

Ore Bucket with Distant Mountains

On the way up toward the mountains, there are several towers that used to support the tramway system put in place to move the ore down to the smelter. At stop #3 is the Cossack tunnel and compressor building. This mine tunnel and all of them up here are off limits. There are plenty of warning signs but surprisingly they are not gated off. We had enough sense to avoid entry. The building is a huge (40’ x 100’) three story structure but doesn’t look like it will be standing for many more years. Much of the roof is gone as are windows and siding. Plus it appears the building was built into the side of a hill and over the years, the hill is pushing in the backside of the building. It’s another place that we were smart enough to not enter.

Cossack Compressor Building

Looking In and Out of the Building 

Cossack Mine Entrance

Another View of Compressor Building

We weren’t the only people up here and we could see the SUV ahead of us continuing up the route. As we proceeded up the road, we realized that what was identified as acceptable for low clearance vehicles may not be so any more, or "low clearance" has a completely different meaning here in Idaho. It didn’t help that the road was snaking up the side of a mountain and was generally only wide enough for one vehicle. Chris doesn’t find this type of adventure pleasurable. So we made it up to stop #5 and explored the buildings here before calling it quits and heading back down. I would have enjoyed doing an ATV ride up here and there was a large pullout near the beginning of the road where a few trucks with trailers were parked. The views are pretty spectacular  in this part of Idaho.

Another Old Mine Building

View over Other Buildings

When we were passing thru Idaho in the spring of 2017, we had spent a couple nights in Twin Falls. We had spotted Craters of the Moon as a place we should visit but it was close to a 90 mile drive from there so we passed. Arco is a much better starting point to tour this National Monument. The next morning we headed out and only had about a 20 mile drive to get to the visitor center. Inside we found all sorts of displays about how the landscape in and around this National Park was created between 15,000 and 2,000 years ago by various volcanic eruptions. It was definitely a good place to stop and get a synopsis of the park before heading in. Plus if you want to hike in any of the caves in the park, you must stop here to get a permit from the ranger.

The park isn’t huge. If you drive all the roads within the park, you’ll only travel ten miles or so. It also isn’t the kind of park that has great hiking trails so we figure our one day here should be more than adequate to see nearly all the park. Out first stop is at a pullout for the North Crater Flow Trail. There is a short trail here made even shorter by construction work being done on a portion of it. We were surprised by the variety of textures and colors of the lava rock. Plus there is a bit more plant life than we were expecting. Don’t get me wrong, you won’t mistake this otherworldly landscape with a pine forest, but it isn’t quite as barren as the moon for instance.

Tree Growing in Unlikely Spot

The next stop was at the Devil’s Orchard Nature Trail. The half mile loop winds thru more odd shapes. We learned that some of the larger hunks of rocks here were broken off a different crater and “rafted” in molten lava in a subsequent eruption. I’ll admit, it wasn’t evident that this larger rock looked any different than all the surrounding rocks. But I suppose geologists have better training and tools than we do, so I’ll take their word on this.

Rafted Rock

Just when we thought all this landscape was looking alike, we got to the Inferno Cone. Picture a pile of cinders piled 160 feet tall in an oval shape with about a mile circumference. My pictures don’t do it justice but it was pretty impressive. A cinder cone is formed when a high velocity eruption spews lava high into the air as smaller globs that harden before coming back down. There is a trail up to the top that is less than a quarter mile long but with the change in elevation and the rather loose footing of the cinders, it was a bit of a challenge to get up top.

Trail up Inferno Cone

Looking Back Down Trail

However once up top, you are treated with some great views in all directions. Given the complete lack of vegetation and the slope of this cinder cone, we were surprised to find a very large evergreen tree up top along with all sorts of grasses, shrubs and flowers growing nearby.  It was quite pretty.

Panoramic View from Top of Inferno Cone

Unexpected Large Tree

Pretty View Up Top

Just a quarter mile away from Inferno Cone is another parking area for a couple of spatter cones. Spatter cones are ones that were formed when the lava is expelled in larger globs at a low velocity. It doesn’t have a chance to harden before coming back down so it splats on previous globs and forms an odd texture - quite differ than the nearby cinder cone. One of the spatter cones is named the Snow Cone because it can hold snow inside through the summer months. Chris initially didn’t believe me when I told where there was still snow in it at the beginning of September.

Snow Still in Spatter Cone

There is another walk out of this parking lot to something called the Big Craters. It doesn’t seem to be one that is very popular probably because it is an even steeper quarter mile hike than Inferno Crater. We felt it was worth the effort because we got to see what is usually expected when we here the word crater.

Big Crater

The next stop was at the southern end of the park. We hiked the one mile out the Tree Mold Trail. It was a pretty walk but with no shade, the sun was hot. As we got near the end of the trail, there were a couple stakes with signs indicating where the tree molds were. What are tree molds? Thousands of years ago, a volcano erupted and the lava flowed into a forest where the trees were surrounded. The charred bark of the tree left an imprint in the lava which now is exposed on the surface. This is another of those “trust the geologist” locations. We really were having a hard time differentiating what was labeled as tree molds with all the other lava in the area.

View Along Tree Mold Trail

Tree Mold????

Our last stop was at the cave area. This is where our permit was required. Admittedly there isn’t a ranger at the walkway that leads to the caves checking for permits but there is a sign stating one is required. There are four caves in this area. Chris had identified the Indian Tunnel as being one she might be willing to attempt based on the information she read. The walkway out to the caves was some asphalt laying atop a vast field of lava rock. The sign at the entrance to the tunnel helps to orient us on what to expect. The tunnel is about 800 feet long and is 40 to 60 feet below the surface. There are several areas that have caved meaning there will be daylight coming in. There are metal stairs in place for visitors to safely enter the tunnel.

Trail to Caves

Entrance to Indian Tunnel

Indian Tunnel Map

Once inside the tunnel, there isn’t much of a path. In collapsed areas, there are a lot of larger rocks that you need to negotiate around and over but there is plenty of daylight so it’s not too hard. In the longer intact section, I did find it handy to have brought along a flashlight. Headroom was adequate for most of the walk and it wasn’t until we got to the exit that there was some real rock scrambling to get out.  It was a fun and interesting way to end our day here at Craters of the Moon. We easily managed to get in most of the sights in more depth than many visitors and we were only here for five hours or so. I would put Craters of the Moon in the category of check it out if you’re nearby but don’t plan on more than several hours. We enjoyed it but doubt we will feel the urge to visit it again when we come back to Idaho.

Looking Back at Entrance Stairs

Smaller Tunnel Section

Rock Pile at Collapsed Section

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Looking Down Side Cave

Chris Emerges from Indian Tunnel

With everything to see in Arco Idaho out of the way, we need to start our journey south. We have reservations in Moab Utah roughly 500 miles away with two nights to spend along the way. The plan was to just do some boondocking at Elks Lodges or something similar as we head thru central Utah. We drove a little over our 200 mile limit to the town of Farmington just north of Salt Lake City and stopped at the Cabelas. Most of the Cabelas have designated RV parking to the side or back of the store. There were a couple rigs already there and some employees or customers had decided to park their cars in some of the RV spots. It turned out to be a very hot day and with the rig sitting on a blacktop parking lot, we found we needed to run the generator in order to keep the air conditioning going. Other than checking out the store, we really didn’t explore Farmington at all.

After the hot and noisy location at Cabelas and seeing the forecast called for continued hot weather, we decided we should just find a real campground about halfway to our stop in Moab. The town of Helper Utah was right along our route and there was a new campground that had just upended up this past spring. It’s so new that the aerial view on Google Earth just shows a large pasture. This campground, like many it seems, has an active train track nearby. When we were investigating their rates, they employed an ingenious strategy of calling the sites nearest the track the train watching sites trying to turn it into a feature!

We arrived and the place had plenty of open sites. We didn’t opt for a train watching site although we still could see the trains from our spot. Since we got in early enough, we decided to walk into town which looked nicer than most of the small rural towns we come upon. The old corner gas station no longer sells fuel but appears to have been fully restored to look like an old time Conoco Service Station. There is an old tow truck sitting next to the pumps and an old Buick Eight from the late 40’s or early 50’s in the service garage. Possibly the nicest thing here was the price of fuel 38 cents per gallon!

Historic Conoco Station

Peeking Thru Window of Station

38 Cent Premium Fuel

Old Buick Eight

Neon Sign

There is also the Western Mining and Railroad Museum. We didn't have time to check out the inside of the museum but did see some of the mining machines in a small area outside. We also saw Big John the mining man. It was a much more relaxing night in the town of Helper before heading to Moab to see Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.

Mining Machine

Snow Plow Train

Big John The Mining Man

Mountain View From Arco Idaho