Lightning, or Something...

I may have more to say about the rest of the trip later, but we just got back. We drove something like 640 miles today. I expected my mom would want to stop in Rock Springs; she didn't. Then I figured she'd give out at Kemmerer: nope. We made it back at about 9:30 pm, just as it was starting to get dark. I think we were both sick of hotels and wanted to be in our own beds.

Anyway, that has little to do with this post, other than the events occurred on the trip. I suspect that if it weren't for the ruddy "terminal" notification, the only result would have been a wave of regretful nostalgia, which would have been over almost instantly. But being under stress already, something just snapped inside me when we were in Grand Lake. The moment itself was more one of shock (mixed in with other stuff), but afterwards it felt as if something had broken loose, snapped, inside me.

There was a little bit of buildup to it: nothing major, nothing that one might expect to lead to someone snapping: my mom hates miniature golf, and I've always loved it. There's a miniature golf course in Grand Lake, and we walked by it, and I jokingly suggested we could play. It would have been better, I think, if she'd just said "no." Instead, she came up with all sorts of convoluted garbage suggestions, including that I "adopt" one of the little kids already playing to play with. At that moment, I was annoyed, but otherwise fine.

Then we finished walking down the one major street of Grand Lake, and drove down to the lake itself. There were kids out learning to sail, people in rented pedal-boats, kids building sand castles: pretty typical of the place. What wasn't typical was that I was suddenly angry. Not with the people there, not even with my mom in particular, but just angry. It took me a while to figure out why. I have always, always, wanted to rent one of those pedal-boats, or take a sail-boat out, or...or any number of things, and I've never had an actual opportunity. My mom won't consider any activity even remotely physical, and, when my dad was saner, he just thought it was a waste of time.

It was like the day just died before my eyes, right then and there. I turned around and walked back to the car without saying a word, and, more unusually, without even taking any pictures of or around the lake. It took me the better part of two days to get over that feeling of emptiness and isolation. For whatever reason, the drive back home helped quite a bit, as did a hike later in the same day. On the hike, it occurred to me that there might be a career option open to me that would let me do things that I love while maintaining most of my freedom. I don't know if a year is enough to establish myself sufficiently to make a living at it, but I'd like to try: photography. Most of the later events that helped clear the angry fog revolved around light and color and imagery, too, so I think there may actually be something there. I might also just be going insane, but it's better than feeling like a rather large chunk of scar tissue has been ripped out of my heart and a piece of leather nailed in its place.

So that was my last two days. Time will tell if that was a useful thought I had after having my heart ripped open or just a desperate grab for something to hold onto.

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Floored and Iced

My mom wanted to stop at the Wal-Mart in Sterling, Colorado, today on our way down from Cabela's. They actually had a small section of gluten free foods. At a Wal-Mart. Admittedly, that's the only sizable store in Sterling, but I'm still surprised. It didn't have as much as the Fred Meyer in Pocatello, and now I'm curious to see if our Wal-Mart as anything. I'm betting not, since Fred Meyer and a few smaller "health food" stores fill that niche in Pocatello.

Oh, the new owners of the Akron hotel (which used to be the Crestwood and is now something with "Lighthouse" in the name) haven't been unplugging the room refrigerators when customers leave. This is a problem for any customers who might actually want to get anything into the freezer.

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Random Phrases from the Trip

It's a bug eat bug world... *pause* It's a car smash bug world.

It's windshield wiper eat smashed bug world.

Pick one speed! [To a car ahead of me on 287... Speed limit was 65; the car was randomly alternating between 55 and 65; at the next passing lane, I zhoumed around it]

You have to go faster to zhoum. [To a car trying to pass me in a similar passing lane. The last two pickups had zhoumed around me (I'm spelling it the way I was pronouncing it), and this one just sort of limped.]

The room just sort of rotated... the walls are kind of like echoing.

That last one was me after we finally got to Fort Collins and I'd had both food and a Thai tea float. Between the caffeine, the sugar, and the long day, I was rather out of it. I suggested that my mom should drive us to the hotel. It didn't help that Princess decided to wander off last night and not come back until midnight. On the plus side, in between calling for her and going out with the flashlight, I got almost everything done last night, so I didn't have much left in the morning. On the minus side, I was driving on not enough sleep. I took a few naps while Mom was driving, but I think my 20 minutes of meditation outside Rawlins did more good than the naps. Mom thought I was sleeping. ^/^

Okay, too tired to think of more to say now. Also probably too incoherent.

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Winter (temporarily)

After our refreshingly springy first day of spring, the cold front did indeed move in... there was about 4 inches of snow on my front porch on Monday morning. So I haven't accomplished much in the garden/yard work department this week. I've been working on cleaning instead, which in large part involves dealing with things that I've been ignoring (like a nice little cupboard that is meant to be hung on a wall, not sitting on a floor where it can be knocked over).

And my mom did change Skitzi's name. To Snickers. I'm not entirely convinced this is an improvement, but she's not my cat. Apparently the biggest problem for Mom was that she couldn't remember the name Skitzi. I've got to admit that I find this entirely puzzling, and can only conclude that my skill in learning languages was not inherited from her.

As for travel, I'm hoping to drive down to the Salt Lake area on Thursday and stock up on some things at Whole Foods Market. There's a Barnes and Noble next door to it, and a few other interesting shops nearby, so I'll probably make a day of it. I was considering going tomorrow, but between the tires in my trunk and the "70% chance of precipitation" vs. "10%" for Thursday, I figure I'd be better off waiting. Most of the snow from Monday had melted off today, until another half-inch or so fell tonight. With any luck, Thursday will be a melt-off day rather than a re-deposit day.

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Two Sunrises, One Morning

Two sunrises in a row
on the road to Eagle Rock
Over lava beds, rocks glowed
with molten liquid light
In the taller mountains north
the sun set for a moment
Night settled in that moment
until the sun rose once more.








A few clarifications: Eagle Rock was once the name of Idaho Falls, and it scanned better when I was writing this. Basically, the mountains to the east of I-15 vary in height, and I was traveling at just the right time to see the sun rise over Hell's Half Acre, only to "set" again behind some taller mountains, and then rise above them as well.

I'm not entirely happy with the last line yet... but I can't think how to fix it just now. But here's a sunrise that's out of this world.

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Cleaning and Driving

That's what I've been up to the past two days. On Sunday, I got my living room 90% clean, which involved rearranging furniture. I hadn't actually planned to do anything beyond moving the recliner so that I'd have a place for the Christmas tree (which I will likely put up on Black Friday so as to avoid the Blackness). However, the more I looked at the couch, the more I thought that it was time to move it. As I didn't want to move the bookshelf/plant-stand from its spot at the south window, my options were limited. It finally wound up at an angle, facing the northwest corner, where I put the tv stand. The cats seem to like it in that locations, as there is now a cubbyhole behind it and they can climb through the VCR/DVD access area to get there.

As for today, I went to Idaho Falls with my mom. I'd originally planned to go back down to the Whole Foods and Barnes and Noble down in the Salt Lake area, but my mom wasn't acting very enthused and I didn't relish the idea of 6 hours of driving just to get there and back...so I scaled back. Downside: No GF/Soy-free chocolate chips to be found, but I can order those online. However, the Wealth of Health Nutrition Center on Woodruff has a surprisingly large selection of gluten-free items. Much more than the last time I stopped in there, which was 2 or 3 years ago. They didn't have the Enjoy Life chocolate chips that I was hoping to find, but, again, those are available online.

And now I'm seriously considering just going to bed. I seem to have worn myself out. I did wake up to an oddly random dream this morning. I was with the Mythbusters out in a desert canyon somewhere. Carrie was telling everyone to be careful not to draw the attention of "The Alpha," as in the leader of the wolfpack in the area. However, someone was speaking too loudly, using too many "ow" sounds, and we heard the howl start up. The wolves came in. They were... very small, and strangely doglike. One of them looked like a cross between Buster* and Socks*: the size and shape of a small terrier, but with tight black curly hair. The other one that I saw looked like Scamp*. This one I successfully distracted with a rotten piece of fruit (either a tomato or an apple), which he happily started eating. That was when my alarm went off.

*Socks: the first dog my family ever had. Small terrier with a spring in his step. Literally. He had some sort of neurological/genetic thing that made one back foot move like he was skipping.
Scamp: cockapoo; second dog my family had. Sort of. He was really Dad's dog. He tolerated me, but hated everyone else (including my mom). Well, not quite. A cat had adopted us around the same time we got Scamp, and they became buddies. The cat (Indiana) died a few years before Scamp did, and I remember how sad it was to see him looking around, checking all her favorite napping spots, trying to figure out what had happened to her.
Buster: Dad's current dog. Larger than the other two. Terrier-mix. He's a much sweeter dog than Scamp, though more mischievous.

As I'm pretty sure I'm rambling, I'll stop there.

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Bruneau Dunes

On Thursday, my mom had an Excel workshop in Twin Falls. I tagged along, because that got me most of the way to Bruneau Dunes State Park, and I've been wanting to go there ever since I heard of it. It's about another hour and a half from Twin to the park. Overall impression: HOT. Admittedly, I was there at the worst possible time of day (10:00 am to 2:00 pm). If I go there again, I think I'll plan on going down in the evening, camping overnight, and then going up the dunes the following morning. Still, it was enjoyable to play on a giant sand dune. This has to be my favorite picture:

Explanation and more pics below the fold.

Those are the impressions left in the sand from my hat. It fell off when I stopped to rest on my way up the dune. ^/^




It's that way! This was when I finally cleared all the shrubs and things around the lake below the dune and could see the main path up to the top. It doesn't look that bad, does it? Probably wouldn't be at, say, 7:00 am.




Here is the view from just below the top. It took me roughly an hour from the previous picture to get to this one. Walking/climbing in that thick sand is rather interesting. It's a lot like walking in deep snow. I already knew that the trick for going down was to act like I was walking down a staircase and dig in my heels at roughly a ninety degree angle. That works beautifully in sand. For walking up, I tried the inverse of that: digging in the toes at a ninety degree angle as if going up a staircase. That does work if you get your toes dug in far enough. Unlike going downhill, gravity doesn't help you out. It's an exhausting way to walk, particularly in full sun.




And here's the view down the other side of the dune. Some interesting features that I might have been interested in exploring...had going down there not necessitated climbing back up.




I fell in love with these little grass-sand-circles. It looks like, when the wind blows, the grass tips contact the sand and make arcs as they go back and forth. There were lots of these where there was grass growing in the sand. Absolutely beautiful. Random fact: the sand where there were plants growing tended to be more solid, harder to dig my feet into, than sand elsewhere. I don't know if that's because there was more water in it, or more of a certain type of sand/soil, or what.




Those are my footsteps coming down the side of the dune, criss-crossed by another set of prints that look hoofed to me. Deer, maybe.




And here we have something that reminds me of crop circles. Clearly aliens have been using these dunes as a landing strip and the government is covering it up. Or, more likely, something about the wind flow and the shape of the dune and landscape results in oddly flowing air currents... `/^

EDIT: For more on treating sand as snow, and the presence of aliens and flamingos, click here. (Lots more pictures!)

RE-EDIT: Another good gallery here.

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A Blessing

I found this as a card at the Paper Store in Estes Park. After I saw it, I'd hoped to find it as a magnet (also the source for the image), but they only had the card. I love the sentiment expressed in the blessing, and that it works for anyone, regardless of their particular religious leanings (or lack thereof). The magnet's slightly pricey, but if it's as large as the card (5 inches by 5 inches), that's not a huge surprise.

I bought the card while I was there, and put it up on a magnet board anyway. ^/^

EDIT: Erm, that link is for a journal with the blessing pic on the cover, not for a magnet. Which also explains the expense. I didn't read carefully enough. Here it is as a magnet. Smaller, but about the same price I paid for the card.

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GF Tips: Chain Restaurants

There are plenty of good guides to these, and the lists seem to be growing. Here's a site that lets you search for gluten free restaurants by city and state. It's not complete, but it's a starting place. Here's another that is alphabetized by the chain's name, and has a brief review of each. And yet another that mainly links to "allergen lists" for each restaurant. When traveling, it's useful to know these names so that, given a choice, you can choose a restaurant that you know will have edible food.

Prior to my Colorado trip this year, I went looking for restaurants that accommodated gluten-free, and found a big surprise: Wendy's actually has a list of gluten-free products. Unlike most other fast food places, the list does not consist of "Order X without the bun." The chili, several salads, and the frosties are all gluten-free. The fries themselves are gluten free, but in some places may be cooked in the same grease as things that contain gluten, so ask. Oh, if you try to order one of the Chicken Salads, and they ask you what kind of chicken, tell them grilled. That may or may not be one of the mentioned options, even though, theoretically, that should be the default option, but anything else (American or Spicy were the choices offered my mom) will be breaded.

Other chain restaurants that I have been to and tried their gluten free menus:
Beau Jo's: pizza place; in Fort Collins, at least, the GF menu is simply a page in the regular menu.
Chili's: Decent selections; ask for the "allergen menu".
Pier 49: Most locations. So far, there doesn't seem to be an official GF menu, but the one in Pocatello posted "gluten free crusts available" on its sign. Hopefully they'll go one better and get a list of guaranteed GF toppings soon.

As for the two "big" fast food chains, last I checked, Burger King did not acknowledge the existence of celiacs in any way shape or form. Please boycott them. McDonald's has the typical "Order X without the bun" guidelines, with an oddity. McDonald's French fries apparently contain either wheat or an ingredient made from wheat, but independent testing has found no traces of gluten in them (sorry for no citation, but I can't remember where I found that). I still will not eat them, at least in part because I don't go to restaurants where the assumption is that everything will be served on a poisonous bun, but I thought I'd pass the info along.

GF Tips Index

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John Running, Stories in Stone

I said I'd bought some rock art. Just now I went looking for more info on the artist, John Running. There are several people named "John Running" involved in various kinds of art (or else he is extremely prolific), but adding "stories in stone" to the search produced two very good links. The first describes itself as "frags", presumably meaning "fragments." The next is "Artwork", and clicking on home takes you to the homepage. The piece most similar to the one that I bought is under painted rocks, this one. I don't know if that is the original from which the mold was made or not, but I do know that mine is painted differently:



*sighs* The flash made everything look a bit bluer than it really is, but my hand just wasn't steady enough for the non-flash pictures. The colors are fairly subtle, but beautifully applied. Hmmm... a closer look at the little pamphlet suggests that John Running himself did not do the painting, but that someone named "Magda" painted it, with John Running's permission. This is probably why I could afford it. ^/^

The other design I considered was a cast of this one, but the turtle just didn't speak to me the way the horse did. When I looked at the turtle carving/painting, I saw a turtle. When I look at the horse one, I see "freedom."

*ADDENDUM: I just came across a few of these available on e-bay. An unpainted one has a "buy it now" price that is higher than I paid for a painted one! I'd suggest avoiding these auctions and trying to find a reputable art dealer instead. Seriously, prices in Estes Park are most often higher than elsewhere.

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Akron: The Lighthouse Inn

... aka "The Crestwood" to every long-time resident of Akron, Colorado. Even if the name-change lasts (as it likely will until the current owners decide to sell it), I would bet solid money that fifty years from now, you'll still hear some people in Akron calling it the Crestwood. Not everyone, but some people. This is the third owner since Grandma moved to Pocatello, and decided that she didn't want to show favoritism by staying at one particular friend's house over another. Ergo, hotel. Also, a wee bit more privacy. Grandma's gone, but we keep coming.

The first owner was an older gentleman with an apparently senile dog who would wander semi-randomly through the parking lot. He knew Grandma from when she lived in Akron, and we were VIPs since we were with her. The next one that I remember was a woman probably slightly younger than my mom. She had the hotel for several years, but under duress. Apparently her no-good brother had promised to help her run it and promptly disappeared once she owned it. Now it seems to be a family running it. The guy at the desk said he was helping his mother-in-law with it. I caught a brief glimpse of a puppy behind the desk, and one young kitty came out to greet us. Very cute and friendly, and also an efficient fly-trap.

The last owner did the best she could, but was pretty much on her own. So far, the new people seem to be doing a bit more upkeep. The doors all have fresh coats of paint; the plumbing works; the linens are all new; and there's a genuine wireless network. Oh, there are even itty-bitty soaps and shampoos in the bathroom ... which I can't use without a full ingredient list, but oh well. The new towels and shower curtain are actually a bit of a let-down. The last owner had clearly found her shower curtains on extreme clearance somewhere, as they were the most boisterous patterns in the gaudiest colors imaginable. Her towels weren't quite as interesting, but even blue stripes were nice after a week in hotel after hotel with white, white, white...

For a small-town hotel with all of maybe 16 rooms (some of which are likely occupied by the owners), it's quite nice. It could do with new mattresses and modern combined heater/AC units. I'm not as particular about mattresses as my mom, and I slept just fine, but just sitting on them, you can tell they've pretty much had it. As for the air-conditioner and heater, they are currently separate, noisy units. I have a sneaking suspicion that they'd save enough in power/gas bills by replacing them to make up the cost in a year or two. Pure speculation on my part, but I can tell you that when I replaced a forty or fifty year old furnace in my house, it cut my heating bill in half. These are likely that old.

Anyway, the latest thunderstorm seems to be breaking over my head, so I should probably log off. At least I'm not out in it this time. ^/^

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Miracle of Miracles...

Thar be internet access herrre!

But thar not be time to write much.

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Tumbling Tumbleweeds...

This is likely the last night I'll have internet access for a while. We used to have a back-up for Akron, vis-a-vis a very mediocre dial-up connection, but I cancelled it last year as that was the only time it was getting used. It's been a good trip ... other than the cloudburst as I was trying to climb the stairs to the labelled highest point in the park. I might have kept climbing anyway, except the thunder was getting closer and closer, and it's a wee bit exposed at the top. Also it was hailing. As a result, I got drenched, and wound up buying a dry pair of shorts in Grand Lake, as I had shortsightedly left my clothing bag at the hotel. It is a quite nice pair of shorts, with lots of large pockets.

The primary things I wanted to find this trip were a new coat and some new gloves. Both goals are now fulfilled. At the Nepal-Tibet import store, I found a quite beautiful coat with a wool exterior and cotton lining. The sales clerk informed me that it was a Sherpa coat, and that it was quite warm and good in the wind. The wool is thinner than on the wool coat that I currently have, but the lining may make the difference. My current wool coat is apparently from South America, btw. I had someone in a store ask me where I'd gotten it, as he recognized the design (around Pocatello, that likely means he went on a "mission" to S. Am.). It's the warmest coat I've ever owned. My only complaint is that the buttons have a nasty tendency to come off.

Anyway. Gloves. I lost one of my good gloves this winter. I found a very similar pair at the Twisted Pine. Better yet, it was on sale. See, I can't wear polyester-lined anything. I can't wear Thinsulate. I can't wear any of the fake-fleece, etc., garbage that is easily found and cheap. I can wear leather, and wool, and rabbit. So I got one leather pair lined with rabbit fur and one deerskin pair lined with cashmere. As if to reproach me, there's a rabbit hopping around the parking lot right now... I would love it if there were a natural plant fiber that would (a) keep my hands warm and (b) stand up to hard work (shoveling, for instance). To be honest, the artificial fibers are pretty lousy at (a), though decent at (b), but I can't wear them.

From a few web-searches, I found out that there's a dedicated gluten-free store between Loveland and Estes Park. It's called Granny's Gluten Free Zone. Most of the brands I'd seen before. One that I hadn't is called "Outside the Breadbox" and is apparently based in Colorado Springs. I highly recommend their multigrain crackers. Hmmm... those must be new, as they don't show up on the product page. Anything not frozen is supposed to be available to order, though it looks like the ordering process isn't quite automated. Still, you might be able to find them here, at the company's site. While it's hard to describe them exactly, they remind me a lot of wheat-thins, only with better flavor. *shrugs*

Okay, I think it's time to stop rambling now, and try to figure out where (if?) I want to hike in Rocky Mountain National Park tomorrow.

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Hotel Reports

Rawlins, Econolodge: Lousy. Wireless internet was not available in rooms. Might have been in the lobby, but I was too tired to check. Bathroom door did not close all the way. Claims of "recent renovation" amount to papering over mediocre decor, and doing it badly (EX: marble threshold in doorway; carpet laid over board in closet; half-inch gap revealing old tile between). Bathtub drained more slowly than the shower put out water, so that I was up to my ankles by the end of the shower. For, say, fifty bucks or less, this would have been tolerable. They were charging much more. Don't bother.

Fort Collins, Quality Inn on Mason: Awesome. Good internet connection. Very clean and new interiors. Spacious. Also a good location. Most hotels here require driving five miles out on Mulberry to get to them, and that gets old very quickly. For very slightly more than we paid for the Rawlins Econolodge, we have a room that's several thousand times better. ADDENDUM: Got to use a luggage cart, as our room was on the second floor and I didn't feel like making enough trips to get Mom's suitcases and the coolers up without mechanical aid. If you take one into a small elevator, do make sure that the wheels that turn are pointed at the door, NOT the static wheels ... or else do not turn it at all once it's in the elevator. Otherwise, getting it out is a major hassle, especially since the elevator gets impatient and starts trying to close the doors.

*I've stayed in Econolodges that I liked; this just wasn't one of them.

Estes Park: Travelodge. Pretty good so far. Slightly smaller than the room in Fort Collins, but everything's clean and works. The wireless network doesn't seem to reach into our room, and also requires a password. The network does work in the lobby, and I did acquire the password ... but I'm actually logged into some random open access network that reaches here. No clue to whom it might belong. This network did (sort of) reach into the hotel room, but wouldn't stay connected. Works just fine in the lobby. Oh, Highland Music now carries Native American flutes! And I now know exactly what my major Christmas present from my mom will be. `/^ Oh, I also found a nice piece of rock art. If I remember, I'll post a picture after I get home. The artist carves a master himself, on a real rock, then makes a mold for mass production. Very very nice.

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Preparing

Too busy getting ready to go to Colorado to post much here, but I thought someone besides me might find this helpful. I have a Jeep JXTCR2 travel alarm clock, which I got because it was cheap and had automatic time-setting via radio. Two things that the user has to worry about setting: the time-zone and the time for the alarm. And the controls are the least bloody intuitive things I've ever come across.

So if you, like me, have misplaced the instructions, I just managed to figure both of these out.

Timezone: Hit "mode". Release. Hit "set" and keep hitting it until the correct timezone is marked. Hit "mode" again to get back to the clock-screen.

Alarm: Hit mode. Release. Hold "set" for about 5-10 seconds (too long and nothing happens). When you release the key, the alarm times should start flashing. Hit "adjust" to cycle to the correct hour. Hit "set" again to get to the minutes, then "adjust" to cycle to the correct minute. Hit "mode" to get back to normal functioning.

Anyone who stumbles across this, feel free to post questions in the comments if there's something else you can't figure out. Who knows, maybe it's something else I know how to do on the thing. '/^

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A Smattering of Succulents

I stopped at the rest area at Hell's Half Acre on the way back from IF today, specifically to see if the prickly pear were in bloom. They were. Lots and lots of good pictures, but I thought the grasshopper was rather cute in this one. Plenty of other bugs in other pics, but I have no clue what most of them are (beyond "beetle").

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Mistletoe: The Water-sucking Vampire of the Desert

The dominant (and in many places only) tree at Craters of the Moon is the limber pine. No, not lumber: limber. Its smaller branches are extremely, even ridiculously, flexible. You can bend them just about any which way without hurting the tree, and even tie them in a knot. This is a tree that usually grows near the tree line in alpine environments, not in lava-encased deserts. According to the guide on the morning hike, the seeds were deposited in the area by glaciation during one of the ice ages, and found loess in which they could germinate. Almost all of the soil in Craters of the Moon gets blown in as loess. The rocks haven't deteriorated enough yet to produce soil locally.


However, the limber pines have a parasite: the dwarf mistletoe. It doesn't look like much to start with, but it is rather hard on the trees. What happens is that it sends chemical messages into the host tree, telling it to send more nutrients down towards where the mistletoe is growing. In turn, this causes the tree to sprout massive amounts of small branches around the mistletoe. The collection of branches is known as witch's broom, as it tends to resemble the rough bristly shape of a classic witch's broom. Additionally, the mistletoe draws water, sucrose and other nutrients out of its host. This can sometimes kill the tree, but I saw at least one tree where the infected part had died while the rest of the tree was still viable.


Early in the park's history, the powers-that-be decided that witch's broom should be eradicated. To that end, they cut down or poisoned thousands of infected trees, many of whose carcasses are still standing. Here it suggests that the purpose was "to 'control' a dwarf mistletoe outbreak," but the signs in Devil's Orchard imply that it was more of an aesthetic decision. They didn't think the trees were as pretty with the mistletoe on them. Nowadays, there seems to be more of a live-and-let-live attitude, and an acknowledgement that the mistletoe is a part of the ecosystem, too.

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Craters of the Moon

Wow. Any place with enough dirt to support plants is blooming up a storm! From the sounds of things, this is one of the most spectacular blooms in nearly ten years. I'm too exhausted to post too much about it, but I would highly recommend going on one of the guided 9:00 am tours. I got a lot of good info there. Not so much in the 1:00 pm tour, as a lot of it was repeat, and there were more people in the group. Smaller groups are better for these things. Also, the first ranger had her master's in geology, so she was able to add more info to a lot of things. Anyway, two pictures below the fold.

These are monkey flowers. Purple dwarf monkey flower and, er, dwarf suk-something monkey flower. The purplish one is about the size of most snapdragon blooms, roughly the size of the tip of my index finger. The yellow one is almost impossible to see unless you kneel down in the lava. There were areas just carpeted with the purple ones. Possibly the yellow ones, too, but harder to tell if so.



Just to give you an idea how extensive the bloom is, see that yellow patch that seems to be at the base of the hill at the back there? Those are buckwheat, probably dwarf buckwheat going by the color. Gorgeous plant. I'll have to see if any of my close-ups turned out when I'm less exhausted.



At any rate, if you're in the area, this is a very good time to head up there.

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Excursion Prep

I'm planning on going to Craters of the Moon tomorrow, so I baked some bread to take along. Despite a few muck-ups, it turned out wonderfully. It's essentially the same thing I made here, but I used almond meal in place of hazelnut meal, and forgot about adding the milk. Now, if only Montina flour were easier to find. It adds such an awesome flavor to bread. *sighs*

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Wapi

Found it this time! Though I was actually trying to find the Crystal Ice Cave... These are the directions I got for Crystal Ice Cave Road off of Google maps, with a few modifications:

27.9 mi – about 1 hour 12 mins

1.	Head west on Idaho St toward N Oregon Trail	0.3 mi
2.	Turn left at ID-39	6.0 mi
3.	Turn left toward N Pleasant Valley Rd	0.4 mi
4.	Turn left at N Pleasant Valley Rd	8.5 mi
5.	Turn right at Quigley Rd	1.0 mi
6.	Turn left at Roth Rd	0.2 +? mi
7.	Turn right at Schultz Rd	2.1 mi
8.	Turn left at Homestead Rd	2.0 mi
9.	Turn right at Winters Rd	0.8 mi
10.	Slight left at Ice Cave Rd	6.4 mi
11.	Continue on Crystal Ice Cave Rd	0.2 mi

I tried the turn at Schultz Road, and did find Homestead Road, but the only right turn available at the indicated mileage was likely a private road between two fields, and there was no where to go left. So I doubled back, and, on a hunch, went further down Roth Road instead. There I came to Winters Road, which did yield a branch going off to the left. No label, but I'm reasonably certain that it's Crystal Ice Cave Road.

I didn't find the cave itself. If it was anywhere near me, there was no sign indicating this. But by making turns that kept me pointed toward the lava flow, I did make it to Wapi Park. Incidentally, do not attempt to go to Wapi Park in a regular car. Repeat: do not attempt to go to Wapi Park in a regular car ... unless you fancy having the bottom ripped out of it and would like to have multiple holes in any exposed tanks. Why am I emphasizing this? Because I am exactly the type of person to read such a warning and think, "Eh, can't be all that bad." It can. I wouldn't have made it there in my car. I had taken the pickup down to American Falls to pick up a chair (and work on the sink, but it turned out we didn't have enough parts) and decided to go exploring.

From the place where Crystal Ice Cave Road divides from Winters Road, it's roughly 11 miles to Wapi Park. You'll pass a bulletin board mentioning that you're entering part of Craters of the Moon. It's either 7 or 8 miles from there. There's a turn off to the left just past some large rock outcroppings, and it's roughly 5 miles from that turn off. There's another place where the road divides, near a large red rectangular..., er, thing. Bear left there, and it's about 3.5 miles. There's an unhelpful sign pointing back the way you came, claiming Larido Cave is 2 miles that way (no sign marking it if so) and that Highway 39 is 26 miles to your right. Go left, and it's about 2 miles to Wapi Park. You'll come to a hideously nasty bit of exposed lava bed in the road that would utterly decimate most cars. From there, it's roughly 1.5 miles. When you start seeing trees near the road, you're almost there.

Unfortunately, it was very windy and cold today, so I didn't get to explore much. When I've had time to process and upload and eat, I'll probably post a few pictures, but I wanted to get the directions down before I forgot them. Oh, once you get onto Crystal Ice Cave Road, don't expect to go very fast. On the good bits, you might make 20 mph, but there aren't very many good bits.

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