The Devil's playground

CRATERS OF THE MOON, Idaho—Imagine heading out in a Conestoga wagon along the Oregon Trail, moving painfully across the wilds of Idaho, and suddenly encountering an impassable stretch of jagged blackened rock stretching out across the prairie as far as the eye could see.

If you were a God-fearing soul, you'd probably say your prayers and tuck tail and backtrack to greener pastures. But here in Godless America, we've turned the area into a national monument.

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is an unexpected treat bridging Idaho's formidable Nuclear Corridor with the wild lands to the north. If you've never visited, it's certainly worth a short detour from your travels. A seven-mile loop road through the monument puts you up close and personal with what must have been an impressive volcanic display dating back to just before the birth of Christ.

At Craters of the Moon you'll experience a little glimpse into Hell. Most people who visited were hesitant to leave their vehicles to romp among the grotesque spatter cones and shards of ancient lava and volcanic ash. But not us!

And on this 90-degree day, while the sun was high and bright, we chose to hike several trails in the monument, including an arduous trek straight up the top of two huge mounds of cinders, gaining hundreds of feet of elevation and providing us with a front row seat to a spectacular 360-degree view of the expansive valleys beyond the edge of the flow.

Our trek up the cinder cone was not without its price, however. The heat that bores into a human skull while trudging up a coal black mountain of sharp cinders wearing only sandals and no sunscreen can drive a man to madness.

Halfway up the hill I watched rivulets of sweat pouring off my body like the summer rains off a shiny tin roof. I stuck my tongue out in vain, trying desperately to catch a few precious drops of moisture. An extra sharp cinder lodged under the ball of my foot and I crumpled to the ground in agony.

"Leave me here and go get help!" I shouted at Caroline. I don't know why, but shouting seemed appropriate under such duress. "I'll stay here! I can drink my own urine if necessary!"

I watched Caroline continue to trudge her way toward the vast black summit above, so I stood up and brushed myself off and followed her.

But of course, once at the top, with the heat boring down into her brain and the blast furnace heat reflecting off of the hellish black earth, even strong Caroline cracked like an egg. In her madness she dove from a rock and started swimming across the broiling surface like a crippled salamander.

Hah-hah! We were both doomed!

Somehow we survived and returned to the (recently repaired) air-conditioned comfort of our vehicle. We drank deeply from the jugs of strange-tasting water we had acquired back in potato country.

A while later, after the water had seeped back into our cells and restored our sanity, we trudged through another area of the park. There we marveled at the tenacity of life. Patches of wildflowers had sprung up among the blackness, and at one point, in the shadow of a hillside, we watched a giant mouse-looking creature dart from rock to rock, foraging for tender plant chutes. It was the first time either of us had seen a pika—a strange creature known for its high-pitched squeak and ability to forage on its own feces for nutrition.

Yep. Hell comes in all kinds of manifestations and we're enjoying them all.

See you on down the road!