Before our yard had even fully leafed out this past May, we abandoned our home for points west.
Some 500 miles later (including western PA, all of OH, and most of IN), we made our first touristic pause for the world's saddest buffalo, at Kankakee Sands.
Illinois was more successfully at tricking us into stopping, luring us into two parks and delivering a valuable lesson: no entrance fee = very limited facilities. Which in spring meant wet feet on the unimproved trails through St. Peter sandstone in Starved Rocks State Park,
and rickety hopping boulders at nearby Matthiessen State Park, whose features were likewise formed 16,000 years ago by melting glacial floodwaters through 425-million-year-old sandstone.
Lacking relief upon which the saturated skies could unload their burden of moisture, the Midwest was blanketed in a humid haze as we passed through.
Proving we had learned nothing from the neighboring state, we then took our lives in our hands by visiting Iowa's Ledges State Park--another free park with trails that became particularly treacherous in the rain.
Then came a couple hundred miles of literally nothing in Nebraska...
Followed by another data point in the entrance fee-facilities correlation, in the form of excellent trails on the other side of the paywall at Smith Falls State Park.
Only when we entered the Black Hills of western South Dakota, however, did we finally take some time to tool and hike about.
We particularly enjoyed pine-on-Precambrian granite
and notably happier buffalo (of ~2000 free roaming bison).
In Wyoming, we were impressed by The Simpsons-like clouds,
and seeing spring snow on the Tetons (and even a little on us).
The surprise of Idaho was the unusually scenic rest areas. We took a lovely short hike through Devils Half Acre Rest Area (aka Hell's Half Acre Lava Field), taking in stunted junipers, cactus, mosses, lichen and the occasional spring flower amid 5000 year-old pāhoehoe and ‘a‘ā basaltic lava.
Our target, however, was a pleasant springtime visit to Craters Of The Moon National Monument. We walked many miles through lava flows that erupted 2,000-15,000 years ago from the Great Rift of the Snake River Plain.
The Dewdrop Caves and Indian Tunnel trails allow you to (just barely) weave through deposits overlaying exposed lava tubes.
I particularly enjoyed the equidistant dwarf buckwheat dotting the red and black volcanic soils between layers of stunted limber pine.
Entering Oregon, we crossed through patches of green on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest,
and got a little excited by the time we caught the first views of Mt. Hood as we came upon the Columbia River.
Our goal was Rowena Loop, where the arrowleaf balsamroot was (once again) past prime (but who can ever be there in April?!?).
Before we knew it (discounting the hour stuck in construction before the I-205 junction...), and before M&D were done dusting, we completed our 3000+ mile journey out. And Waldy did great: no neck problems and better than expected gas mileage (both probably because I was never behind the wheel).
