Day 15 - Idaho and the return voyage or "How it all came to an end"

The final day of our trip was also had the earliest starting time of our leg. I set the alarm for 7 because there was a lot of things to do before we left Idaho. By 730 we were on the road to Craters of the Moon. The drive was pretty bleak, lots of potatoes, but there were a few interesting views along the way, like this one:

The craters were really cool. I'd never seen a lava field before, Dad was telling me that it reminded him a lot of Hawaii. I'd expected the rocks to be a lot smoother, boy was I wrong.

Our next stop was going to be City of Rocks but we decided that was too much back tracking so it got nixed,  so we were off to Minidoka. This turned out to be extremely difficult. Minidoka is an old Japanese internment camp in the middle of nowhere Idaho. It's also one of the newest facilities under NPS authority and as such a visitor centers is not yet finished. Apparently they also haven't put up many sign for it either. We drove around these rural dirt roads for half an hour trying to find the place with no luck. We later found that we were closer than we thought.

Once we found our way back to the interstate there was only one thing left on the list for the day, Hagerman Fossil Beds. Google maps failed to provide me with a valid location and instead took us to a little river area where people were swimming. That's where we came across this little waterfall:

Dad used his cunning to find a sign that pointed us in the right direction and we were off. Unfortunately we weren't going to see much. Turns out that about a week before our visit the entire area fell victim to a fire and pretty much everything was shut down. Here are a few shots of the area though:

After touring the area we heading off for the freeway. On our way we went through the town of Hagerman, where we found the visitor center for both the fossil beds and the temporary one for Minidoka. This is where we found out how close we actually were and when the fire happened. There was also a short film about the geology of the fossil beds that was really interesting. Apparently the majority of the cliffs were formed in just eight weeks when an ancient lake in the Utah basin spilled over its banks and water went rushing through the valley.

Then it was back on the freeway and the long drive home. Not much to speak of at this point. We made it to Oregon.

 I've been on the majority of the route from that point on. The one cool thing that happened was while I was driving in eastern Oregon. Since Nebraska I'd wanted to see tumble weeds with no such luck. However while doing about 75 down the interstate one came out of nowhere and hit my door! Shook me up for a bit, but well worth seeing.

Then we crossed the river into Washington.

It was about 8:00pm when we crossed Snoqualmie Pass. We were welcomed back to Western Washington with rain. It was most fitting and very appreciated. After everything we'd seen I was happy to find that home was just as it's always been.

I'm going to do a final wrap up post, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, with my final impressions. All in all though a great trip. Thanks so much Dad for the experience. You rock!