West Coast - Day 4

We started off the day by traveling through Idaho Falls to the Idaho Falls zoo. We knew that Xander wouldn't be that interested, as he finds big machines far more exciting than animals, but as I pointed out to Sandra, we didn't know if Evan would like the animals or not. The zoo was packed full of school children, and it wasn't the most impressive zoo, but we still managed to have a good time. Xander actually got excited about the lion, and he even "roar-ed" it. Evan was beside himself when he saw the monkeys. They would sit on the window ledge right at his level and he would walk up to them and touch the glass and make various excited noises. We ended up going through the monkey section twice and we bought Evan a small plush monkey to take home with him. He spent most of the time we were driving bouncing it up and down and making a weird grunting noise that must be his attempt to make an animal noise.

Most of the time at the zoo was spent trying to keep Evan walking the correct direction. He was adamant that he was going to walk by himself, without holding anyone's hand, but that meant he would take off in any direction he felt like and he refused to go the way we wanted him to go. He also refused to be picked up on grades or when we were swarmed by school children, so most of the time at the zoo I felt frustrated. At one point he was pushing the stroller in front of me, when a bunch of kids ran by. I was watching them to ensure they didn't run into us and did not notice that Evan had stopped moving and I ran into him and knocked him down on the asphalt. He skinned his knee and hand and cried until we made it to the penguins.

After the zoo, we made a quick stop at the falls that give Idaho Falls their name, which are on the Snake River. Sandra was excited about that, as the Snake River is one of the rivers you cross in Oregon Trail, which is her favorite Apple ][ video game.

We the hit the road on the way to the Craters of the Moon National Park. It was EXTREMELY windy on the highway, and it took a lot of effort to keep the car on the road, which meant that the drive was very stressful. On the way there, you drive through a government test area, which is where the first nuclear reactor exists - it is now open to the public, but only after Memorial Day, so we did not get to stop and see that. We did drive through Arco, which was the first town powered by nuclear power.

The park is made up of a bunch of lava from underground volcanoes in the area and it does look a bit like the moon, if you ignore the fact that the moon is grey and lava is black. Still it was a very interesting landscape to view. There were a number of walking paths and we tried a couple, but it was so windy that the kids freaked out every time we took them out of the car. I mean, it was windy - the one path Evan and I went up, I could feel the wind blowing the air out of my nose as I tried to breath - but I'm not certain that amount of screaming was necessary.

At one point as we were driving along, I glanced down at the road and saw a snake lying there right before we drove over it. I wasn't too happy about that, as I have now driven 1500 km just to kill a defenseless animal, but I honestly did not see it until the last moment. *sigh*

After leaving the park, we drove to Twin Falls, Idaho where we stopped for the night and did our standard activities - supper, put Evan to bed and took Xander to the pool. Twin Falls is one of those American towns that confuses me. At a population of 40,000, it is slightly larger than Moose Jaw, but the main roads through town have six lanes, packed full of cars, and there are all the major restaurants and big box stores. It must service a much larger rural population than we have back home.