We stayed two nights in Arco, ID so we would have a day to visit Craters of the Moon National Monument. We got a kick out of the website for the nearby, free campground called Honey’s Park. The owner goes by Scar or Keiner and changes his website depending on his mood, but this is a good description that was on his website at one point: “Honey’s is a free, dry, dusty, bumpy, rarely level field campground that is treeless, shadeless, waterless and sewerless, but it does have a dog park. The campground is known for its patriotic and conservative values.” What better place to visit for 4th of July, haha? (Especially since it had electrical hookups so we could run our A/C — it was HOT!)
This was the only campground that I couldn’t make a reservation for ahead of time, so we just dropped by and hoped for the best. As per the website instructions, Randy and I both got out of the truck to talk to the owner over the closed gate. He talked to us for a few minutes and I guess determined we weren’t going to cause any trouble and let us in. Since it was 4th of July, he was grilling burgers for his guests and invited us to join them. There were about 6 of us sitting around and sharing stories, including a couple from Alberta, Canada who would love for Alberta to become the 51st state of the U.S. I thought Scar was pretty funny and had lots of interesting stories, so I enjoyed sitting around chatting for a few hours before fireworks. We had a good view of the firework show from the campground, which was convenient.
The campground looks pretty junky, but very functional. Scar has gutted most of the buses and lives in one, made one a shower (with a gravity fed water tank), one a kitchen (with an oven, microwave, stove, etc), one an entertainment bus (with a TV, library and stereo and a couple of them had beds for bikers, hikers or homeless people that the sheriff sometimes bring by if it’s too cold to sleep outside. His main request of people staying there is that everyone gets together at sunset to sing the National Anthem together. It’s super loud, with the speakers pointed toward town, but it doesn’t sound like the locals mind. I learned something new when Scar played the entire “The Star-Spangled Banner” on July 4th — it actually has four verses. He also plays the Reveille and Pledge of Allegiance every morning around 9am (thankfully not at sunrise!)
I had been a bit concerned about stopping here, thinking we may not enjoy it, but it ended up being great — and not even as bumpy and more level than some of the other campgrounds we stayed at!
At Craters of the Moon, we stopped at the visitor center to get our Cave Permit, then drove the 7-mile one-way loop to see scenic views and do the short hikes. We started with a steep 0.4 mi hike to the top of Inferno Cone to get an incredible 360 view of the area. Next, we drove to the Snow Cone and Spatter Cones, then walked up the short trails to look down into the cones, which are just mini volcanoes.
After driving further around the loop, we stopped at the Caves Area, and hiked the 1.6 mile out-and-back trail, where lava tubes were open for the public to climb into. Climbing over large rocks down into Dew Drop was fun (and much cooler!), but it was a small cave and not much to see or do once down there, so we climbed back up. Walking through the 800 ft long Indian Tunnel was my favorite activity of the day. There were collapsed holes along the way, so it never got completely dark. To exit the tunnel, you had to climb up a big pile of rocks, then out through a small hole. Once out, there were no obvious trails on top of the hard lava, so we just followed the general direction of posts they had guiding us until we met back up with the trail to the parking lot.
We enjoyed the park, and it was definitely worth seeing since we were close by. I wouldn’t bother going too far out of my way to see it, though.
We also toured the first Experimental Breeder Reactor (EBR-I). It was interesting to look at the old machinery and listen to the tour guide, but I didn’t really understand a lot of it, so didn’t retain much of the info. One thing that was cool was the super thick glass and exterior manipulator arms to protect from radiation. When you held a light up to the glass, you could easily see all the separate panes they used to make it thick enough. Also, they had a couple of experimental nuclear engines that they were hoping could be used in an airplane, but they never got them small or light enough before stopping that project.
Scar told us about a cool cave in the Salmon–Challis National Forest, so we drove out there to try to find it. The roads got pretty rough and we weren’t certain we were going the right way, plus it was around 6pm and the area seemed completely deserted. So we decided to enjoy the scenery a bit, then turned around and drove the 30 minutes back to the campground.
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