We passed through some beautiful farm country but didn't get any pictures because of the rain. In the part of Idaho we went through today, wheat and alfalfa were the most prominent crops, we saw some potato fields but not as many as we expected.
Early in the afternoon passed by an area with warning signs that only authorized personnel were allowed. The property was part of the Idaho National Laboratories which I had never heard of. I met a man at a service station who worked there and he told me that they are the largest nuclear research facility in the country, they employ about 10,000 people and most of them are bussed to and from the facility because it is out in the middle of nowhere. They have a fleet of about 150 busses which are used for this purpose. He said they just completed construction and delivered to NASA, a plutonium battery power pack which will power the new Mars rover which is to be launched in November. The battery is about 2' x 2' x 3' and cost the U.S. taxpayers about $120M. It will power the rover which is about the size of a minivan, for the next 20+ years. It will have enough power to move the vehicle up to 35' per day and still have enough energy left to operate the systems onboard. The current Mars rovers are very small vehicles. They are powered by solar panels and can only move several inches per day. One of the two current rovers is lost in a crater and the location of the other one is in question, so this new rover is expected to provide much more information than the current units have.
In Driggs Idaho there is an old drive-in theatre and they have one big Idaho spud on display, the picture pretty much says it all.
We stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument, a 750,000 acre area of volcanic craters and mounds of lava. It is believed that volcanic activity first ocurred here several thousand years ago and that the most recent activity was about 2,000 years ago. The picture above is a mound of very small pieces of lava.
This picture shows a large field covered with larger pieces of lava. In some areas there is some vegetation in others there is none at all.
This picture shows a large chuck of lava. It's really not very attractive no matter what form it's in!
In our travels we frequently see unusual or odd architecture, I'll let you decide which this is. We were unable to determine whether this house was occupied or not. It was on a road that had many large nice homes scattered across a large area, many of them with horse pastures and barns.
