Sunset Crater

10/5/09

Every now and then we stumble across a hidden gem while on a road trip. This trip we stumbled across two gems in the National Park Service that we never heard about. The first is Sunset Crater, a volcano that erupted centuries ago and disrupted the lives of the native peoples who lived in the area. The story of Sunset Crater still lives on in the narratives of local Indians.

Our stay would be overnight and it would be our coldest night on the road. We had a fabulous fire to warm ourselves before going to bed. I had hoped to stay up for star trails, but the temperatures were dipping into the low twenties. The fire and my sleeping bag sounded far more comforting that a chilly night beside the tripod.

In the morning, Michael & I explored the nature trail behind the volcano. We would have liked to make the climb, but the park service closed down climbing on the cinder hill when the trails created gaping scars in the slope. Thirty years later we could still see the scars in the hill.

It's a great little place to see and highly recommended a stop.

A Vision of Blue

Lolo Pass, ID

The assignment was to head out to Lolo Pass on the Montana/Idaho border to document our first annual half-marathon and 5K fun run. The race is the brain-child of our Manager at the Visitor Center who often runs the forest service roads around the pass. She at times would admire the view of the Bitteroots and think that here would be a beautiful place to run a race. So she made it happen and NWIA flew me out to cover the event.

The day of the race was beautiful and hot; the racers were excited to get moving. And soon the musket was fired and they were off. The winner of the 5K crossed the finish line just 20 minutes after he started. Then the wait was on for the rest of the racers to return. I decided to walk to Packer Meadow just a mile up the road and with the promise of Camas filling the meadow.

I was rewarded with a sea of blue as the flowers covered the vast meadow. I was there to photograph runners, which I did, but kept getting distracted by the flowers that surrounded me. The Camas kept calling me further into the meadow and I found it hard to resist. The only thing that chased me off the meadow was the sun beating down. I eventually had to take refuge in my air-conditioned car, but will forever have visions of blue in the mountains of Idaho.