Sleeping on Lava

2023-07-19
OR, ID

Today was a relocation and maintenance day. We drove to Boise for the Subaru appointment I scheduled a couple weeks back. We got up and left bright and early, but several times we were concerned that we might be late. We got to park a while at one of those construction temporary traffic lights, waiting for a pilot car to take us through the area of the landslide. It was pretty much cleaned up, but they were doing some final details or milking the state for extra money; I couldn't tell which. We also hit two construction zones which slowed us down considerably. However, we made it to the dealer a few minutes early.

The car was about 1k overdue but I had specifically done the last service a little late so it was maybe 6500 miles since the last oil change rather than 6000. Close enough. It took and hour or so to get it done, but the waiting room at this dealer was glorious. Big cushy chairs, free coffee, and beautiful lavatories. Also they ran it through a car wash, which took another item off my list. It isn't completely clean, but it is cleaner. I'll take it.

We also bought some groceries including more water and a sandwich for lunch. Walmart also had a gas station (it was a way, way bigger Walmart than the one in Elverson) so we filled up. Val also did a little souvenir shopping.

Next up was the Rave Laundromat. This is an upscale laundry facility with tons of washers and dryers. Better yet, there is a bakery a couple doors down so we had lunch and even some pastries while waiting for everything to get clean. Once the car was repacked we continued east.

The next stop was about three hours down the road: Craters of the Moon National Monument. I had booked a campsite 20 or so minutes down the road at the KOA, but we really wanted to stay at the first-come-first-serve campground. We got there around 6:30 and there were at least a dozen sites left, so we ended up sleeping on lava in the park. The sky was really dark, and there were vast numbers of stars out. It was incredible.

One interesting physics reminder: Insulators work both ways. The dark lava had been in the sun all day and was quite warm. Our air mattresses are designed to keep our body heat from flowing to the cold ground. But today, they insulated us from the warm ground. You could touch the ground between the mattresses and it was cool to the touch, but slip your hand under the air mattress and it was toasty warm. The ground warmed us slowly through the mattress for several hours. The night got pretty cool (high 40's) and we had the fly down so we could see more of the stars, so the extra warmth was welcome. We also had a bit of wind blow through our open tent, but I slept through most of that.