Pictureland

Or, our hero discovers the amusing limits of Google Maps.   It was an easy couple of hours from Butte to Missoula.  Before hitting the town, I ventured north into the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area.   A walk in the woods.   Rattlesnake National Recreation Area.   Google Maps, speaking in its female voice, did get me to the southern end of Rattlesnake.  Good enough, really.  But it wasn't satisfied, directing me away from the trailhead at which I had arrived and down a dirt road.  Unfortunately, this brought me to a remote little residential area.  "In 1000 yards, make a u-turn," the voice instructed.  I was routed back to the trailhead, a dead end in terms of roads.    The voice then told me that I should go straight for 10 more miles, presumably to the main entrance of the recreation area.  This would have involved driving through countless numbers of trees, up narrow paths and o...

As with the drive into Twin Falls, the way out on US-93 took me over the Snake River and a fairly spectacular canyon, not a mile from my motel.  Once clear of that sight, for which I braved the cold air and strong wind, the countryside could not have been less remarkable.   Bridge over the Snake River, US-93, Twin Falls, Idaho Eventually, proceeding east on US-26, the ground began to appear black and upturned.  As if endless acres of the richest loam had been tilled on a cosmic scale.  This the prelude Craters of the Moon National Monument.   "Craters" is a very strange expanse of rolling volcanic landscape, cones and caves.  For most of my visit,  the preserve was swept with fog, obscuring much of that landscape, but rendering it an all the more otherworldly. I first stopped to scale the Inferno Cone, only about a third of a mile.  Not a hundred yards up the black, pebbly slope, I could neither see the modest peak, nor the ...