37th Stop - Craters of the Moon (ID)
Blog Post #47 - Written February 13, 2026
Stay: August 11, 2025
After leaving Boise, we trekked back across Idaho to make our next appointment in Montana. But, we had a pretty cool pitstop along the way. Although, to be honest, our thermometer said it was anything but 'cool' and we had no A/C since we were boondocking at a farm.
Our excitement started as we passed an accident on the side of the road. It must have just happened because a few moments later a low-flying helicopter flew right past us. Based on the huge dust cloud in the rearview mirror, we think he landed to help out at the crash.
We pulled into a dry and dusty Harvest Host site just outside of Arco, ID. And who should greet us but a very thick maned farm dog and a few reindeer.
The reindeer farm was small, but we were there in time to watch the bucks scraping their velvet off their racks. The antlers looked pink, since the velvet is alive and scraping it gets a bit bloody. To thank our host, we bought a Christmas Ornament full of reindeer hair.
I was warned that August was probably the worst time to venture into central Idaho, but we left early in the morning and made it to Craters of the Moon while temperatures were still cool. I'll tell you that I wasn't expecting too much driving through the dusty roads. But when thick, black, porous rocks started surrounding us, I felt we had traveled to a different planet.
We pulled into the visitor center parking lot, and ditched the trailer so we could explore the 7 mile loop around the various craters. We stopped at a massive volcanic sand dune known as the Inferno Cone. We ran up the 160 foot sand pile to check out the views from the top. And by we, I mean that Gary made it to the top; D sat down half-way up and refused to journey on, and the boys just raced up and down the mini dunes.
Our next stops were to explore the Dewdrop and Indian Caves. Q and D took their bikes on this bumpy trail. It was only mildly nerve-wracking, as the path was on a bit narrow with sharp lava rocks lining the path. But they made it, and much faster than waiting for them to walk the whole way! The caves were tight to get into, but opened into long open tunnels. These lava tubes were cool (in both sense of the word, thank goodness!) and had many pockets of light to guide us through. Dewdrop was aptly named because it was fairly small and shaped as a water droplet.
Indian cave was much larger with a few offshoots to go explore. Large rock piles from ancient cave ins turned our tunnel exploration into a fun bouldering excursion. D and I watched the roosting birds as Gary and the boys explored further down the path. Just as I thought we were done, Gary wanted to check out one last tunnel. Always :) So we went to the hole where he should pop out and waited. And waited... And waited... And soon I was about to leave Z in charge of his siblings and go chasing after Gary when he finally reappeared. Apparently, his first path got a bit challenging, so he had to backtrack and find a different way out.
It was a super fun pit stop and worth a visit. Definitely other-worldly and nice to be able to explore big caves without (a) paying an arm and a leg and (b) being told you can't climb/explore around, like most places. After our spelunking, we continued our drive into Montana.
Sagebrush Sheep Moth
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