Yesterday was a l-o-n-g day of driving. We only got to the Crater's of the Moon NP at 8:30 in the evening (addmittedly we lost and hour changing from WDT to Mountain time. The stars last night were magic and I managed to convince a few others to sleep out with me, the shooting stars we saw was well worth it. For the last two night's I've slept under the stars as its bloody hot, I couldn't be bothered setting up a tent as I don't have a partner to share it with. The tent saga is a story in itself.....

There is an even number of people on the the tour so logically I should be sharing a tent (all three man A-frames), which is fine by me. There was a Dutch guy and myself as odd numbers so logically we'd share, not a problem, right? Wrong. He basically told me in broken english that he liked being by himself as when he done this tour before (this is not a typo) he did it this way and liked it. We had a spare tent so I put it up (5 minutes of effort) and slept therefor the first two nights. After this I just couldn't be bothered and the weather was nice. In general I think the group here is a pretty good bunch with a good sense of fun, however as time has progressed and we've got to know everyone else methinks it is good that I'm not sharing with the Dutchman.

Apparently he works in an IT-related profession in Holland and has been on this tour of the NP's in the United States 3-4 times. We know this as he tells us about some of the places we go to and his brought photo's and video along from a previous trip to show us where we are going in advance - one particular instance he tried to educate some of us was while we were preoccupied with a drinking game the other night. This is a bit nerdy and strange but it gets worse. His musical tastes is scary, he brought along a number of CD's to play in the bus....Johnny Cash (which I can live with), pan pipe love songs (versions 1 & 2) and some techno/classical compilation music. Definitely a strange fish. He also insists on wearing around matching bright red t-shirts and shorts which we have almost convinced him is a color that attracts bears. It sounds nasty but this guy is odd, he makes certain Dutch geologists I've worked with in the past look well adjusted! To protect the name of the not-so-innocent he shall hence forth be known as DJ Q.

As I said the other people are a pretty good fun bunch. Today is the fourth of July and we're having a ball all wearing red, white and blue beads, waving flags and I'm wearing a rather stylish red, white and blue mullet wig. Yes, we do get some funny looks from locals but we do get many compliments on our patritosm. We've come up with a number of fun group drinking games around the campfire and also bus games to keep us amused on the road. The classic this morning that had us all in stitched is guessing the names and original artists of the pan pipe classics on the DJ Q's album, we used animal sounds as our buzzers which added to the stupidity and festive spirit.

Now in Idaho and heading for Yellowstone in Wyoming. For the record I visited my biggest Wal-Mart yet in Idaho Falls (it was a big Super Wal-Mart, bliss is a fully stocked Wal-Mart.

Almost forgot Craters of the Moon was cool it was pretty much a ancient lava field created by a small volcano. The highlight was going through some of the lava tubes which were a lot older and consequently less stable due to weathering of lava over the centuries. Some were quiet a squeeze to get through. All of the tubes contained ice and were cold inside which was amazing considering it was 100+ degrees F outside!!