Hell's Half-Acre in Two Movements, with Sword

Hell's Half-Acre is quite a large lava flow (8 by 18 miles, according to the sign, or 144 square miles; Here is a link with a satellite image). The wilder section is roughly 20 miles west of Idaho Falls, on Highway 20. I've been there twice now, both times on Wednesday morning before my sword lesson. Yesterday I decided to see how far I could make it along the trail to the vent before having to turn around. I made it to the two-mile marker, which had a rather nice place to sit and drink some water and eat a fruit/nut bar. I don't mean a bench. This was just a nicely rounded rock ledge with a view of the continuing "trail." Which had a few difficult spots where the junipers had gotten so tall that the guide-flags were hidden. Luckily, I seem to have picked up the knack of seeing the "trail" in areas where there's enough dirt for this to be feasible. I didn't see it at all on my first visit, except right close to the parking lot. Yesterday, I could see the difference immediately in many places. Very helpful when the guidepoles are hidden.

As things worked out, I should have turned around 15 minutes sooner than I did; I was a wee bit late for my sword lesson. :^) Don, however, blamed it on the construction around his house. They had completely blocked off his street, and not bothered to leave any openings for local traffic. To get anywhere, Don and family had to drive across an unpaved vacant lot. I did skirt around one "road closed" sign, then parked about a block back from Don's house (before the next "road closed" sign) and walked the rest of the way. I was rather exhausted (more from the heat than from the hike itself), so I think I was a bit out of it yesterday. Don worked me through several extremely nitpicky corrections. We spent the most time on "Dragon Winds around the Pillar": a move where the sword makes two circles in front of you as you make a twist step to change directions. I'm having several problems here, most of them due to tension in my right shoulder. There was also a timing issue, and yet another realization that it's the waist that drives the movement. Oh, I had also picked up a habit of getting the sword to horizontal when it should have been poined at the ground. Impossible to keep fair-maiden's-wrist that way.

Okay, back to the lava field. Yes, there were wildflowers. I'm sort of backing off from posting a huge assortment with identifications. Later, perhaps, but I would like to post pictures of my new favorite flower: the prickly pear cactus. *grins* Absolutely gorgeous. And edible. And an emergency source of moisture in the desert, should you need it. On the first trip, the cactus hadn't bloomed yet (which is the first picture). But yesterday, there were blooms everywhere! One of my flower books claims that these blooms are hard to find, as they don't last very long. I beg to differ: if you're in an area that's chock-a-block full of prickly pear, you're going to find blooms this time of year. Now, if there's only one or two prickly pear in the area, then the claim is probably valid. Anyway, I'm not going to worry about finding out what kind of prickly pear all of these are, so just enjoy the pictures.




































































These are from Massacre Rocks, not Hell's Half-Acre, but I figured I'd keep all the cacti together: