This was one National Park I debated about visiting. I knew I would be traveling near the park, just wasn’t that interested, but I changed my mind and glad I did. On the bright side, don’t need to go to Hawaii now to see a lava flow 🙂 First thing, the name, there are no Craters, just a very large area of volcanic rock and lava. It was a little eerie as you got close to the park, the landscape changed to this dark baron land, just very dark, burnt. I wonder what the pioneers thought when they came upon this place, one of the Oregon Trail short cuts was just north of the park.
The last time that the volcano was active was 2000 years ago. One of the things about the area is how nature is re-growing. I tried to take pics of these small growths on the rock that starts to breakdown the rock to more of a type of soil that other plants can then grow, you can see this by all the little flowers growing and other plant growth. They had a campground there but I had no interest in staying, I went back south to the snake river where I found a great spot for the night.
