Walking on the Craters of the Moon

Most of you know that my dream was to be the first dog on the space shuttle.  Now that the space shuttles are retired, I thought that I would never make it into outer space.

Well, today I almost did…  I walked on the craters of the moon!  And we did it right here on earth!

We visited one of the strangest places.  It is called Craters of the Moon National Monument.  It is located in the Pioneer Mountains in Idaho.

 This strange place is full of lava flows.  It has high towers called monoliths.  It has globs of lava that hardened into cones.

It all happened during the “Great Rift.”  About 15,000 years ago, a volcano erupted here.  Some of the volcanic activity happened only 2,000 years ago.  It made an ocean of lava rock that looks like the craters of the moon.

In fact, it looks so much like the surface of the moon, astronauts trained here years ago.  They came here to learn about volcanic geology before the Apollo missions.

If you would like to learn more about Craters of the Moon National Monument, just click here:
http://www.nps.gov/crmo/forteachers/upload/MarsBooklet_72dpi.pdf


If you would like to be a Junior Geo-Ranger for Craters of the Moon, just click here:
http://www.nps.gov/crmo/forkids/upload/Georanger%20mod.pdf