Craters of the Moon

On Friday Kleyn got to go on a field trip to Craters of the Moon. I dropped Kaleb and Dannika off with my mom on the way up, so Kleyn and I got to have an afternoon together. We met up with his group to sign in and get name tags and take a picture, but I was a little bit disappointed because after the picture they gave everyone maps and told us to go do whatever we wanted. I figured because it was a field trip for home schooled students Kleyn would have had more interaction with the other kids. Kleyn wasn't too upset because he got to choose where he wanted to go and didn't have to do it in any particular order. He, being the boy that he is, chose the caves first.

We went through Indian Tunnel, which was the only cave we were equipped to go through, and then it was lunch time. On the walk back Kleyn climbed in every little crevice he could find and told me to take a picture.

He ate lunch in the car while we drove around the loop again to Inferno Lookout. They had a sign that you could park and look at, but I didn't realize that the point was to walk up the hill to get the whole view. Kleyn saw some other people up at the top and wanted to go. The hill didn't look nearly as steep as it felt and I didn't realize just how out of shape I am until we got half way up. Kleyn surprised me when he started to get tired because instead of complaining or turning back, he started running up the hill just to get it out of the way. We tried to take some pictures up at the top, but Kleyn had a hard time keeping his eyes open with the sun glinting off of the lava shards.

On the way back down he ran, of course, and I was just waiting for the tiny pieces of rock I was going to have to pull out of his face. He didn't have any problem getting down and then waited patiently for me at the bottom. We spent three hours exploring and then he got a maze book from the visitors center. He also got a pencil for him and each of his siblings and then he got a post card for Josi that has a picture of the tunnel he crawled through. We had a lot of fun and then the kids got to play with the cousins for the rest of the day while I rested for the drive home.