Short Loop at Hell's Half Acre

I was going to stop at a lava tube that I found on a map, but it looked a bit busy there, so I went past it to the untamed portion of Hell's Half Acre. Along the way, I saw some odd mammals that looked sort of like rockchucks, except they were rather large and had some white on their heads. My first thought was that they might be badgers. Then I looked at some pictures of badgers and decided that, no, that wasn't it. It turns out that there's another kind of marmot that's found in Idaho: the Hoary Marmot. It's a bit larger and has paler markings than the more common yellow-bellied-marmot. No pictures, as I was going 65 mph and my camera was stowed somewhere out of reach.

At Hell's Half Acre, there were more cars than I ever remember seeing there this summer. I don't know if all of the occupants were hiking on the lava, though. I only saw one other group of people, and that was on my way back. I also saw a chipmunk for a brief instant, and one bird who obligingly stayed still in a juniper skeleton long enough for me to snap this:

I think it's a dark-eyed junco, of the slate-colored variety. The picture isn't clear enough for me to be certain, but at least juncos can be found in desert areas, unlike most of the other candidates I found in Birds of the Rocky Mountains.

At any rate, it was interesting to see the area with snow still hiding in a lot of the crevices. And it looks like they need to do some trail maintenance. The sign pointing the way to the longer hike to the vent seems to be half-gone. I was rather pleased with myself that I recognized where the sign SHOULD be, and looked around until I found it. It had fallen off of the trail marker and broken. Hmmm... It might be nice to try and make the long hike early in the spring, but I don't have very many free mornings. Even now, noon or later is not a good time to be out there. It's okay for the short loop, but it would be bad for the long hike.