National Parks Road Trip Part 4 - The Last of It.

After Glacier we headed 8 hrs south to Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho.   This was another park that had been mentioned to us along the way and since it wasn't too far out of the way we traveled on down.  

This was a small yet very interesting park.  The entirety of the park was solidified lava formations.  You can see from the pictures that its all lava rock.  The hikes around the park showed vastly different formations and explained how this area came to be.  It was a fun lesson in geology! 

This is our campsite in the midst of the lava rocks!

Here is dad whipping up some yummy french toast!

Sunrise!

Lava formations!

So, this next picture is of a lava tube.  As the lava flows the top layers solidify while the flow of lava below continues.  The lava flows until the underground "river" is emptied and leaves behind a cave.  Some are small and some are HUGE, large enough to walk through.  I found this to be extremely fascinating.  The park had several lava tubes that your could crawl and wiggle through and several you could walk through with no problem.

The next journey was to Rocky Mountain Park. This was a very loooooong drive and we had to stop one night in Wyoming.  We finished up the drive the next day and almost as soon as we entered the park we saw a huge moose. 

We kinda made a bum day of this day because we had been traveling for two weeks and were exhausted so we set up a camp for the night. 

However, the next day we woke up early ( and freezing) to a herd of elk bugling and walking causally through our camp. 

We made it through the park and went on a few small hikes. 

This picture of a pine marten is my most FAVORITE photo of the entire trip.  He was very curious about us and kept peeking out to see what we were doing.  I snapped this picture at just the right time. 

There was a ton of wildlife at the park. This is a Pika....which looks a lot like a mouse without a tail.

Mountains, mountains, mountains!

Our final stop was in Manitou Springs and Pikes Peak.  We took the cog rail to the top of the peak to look out over all of Colorado!

Whooooa! What a great trip! This was an excellent start to my adventures for this coming year. It was also good to spend some quality time with my Dad. America is amazing.  Get out and see it!