We headed to Idaho to visit my mom and visit a few places for scenery and flowers. New to us were the Teepee Rocks. I heard about these from a random Facebook spam post. Who knew random spam could be useful.
The teepee rocks were fun. Even more impressive were the petroglyphs on the way there. I had no idea these existed. Even crazier, I can't find anything about them online. From the BLM sign by them, that begs people not to destroy them, they are older than 50 years. Are they a 100 years, more, who carved them, Native Americans, settlers, both? So many questions, and I have no answers. I suspect this rock has been important for hundreds of years, but the modern destruction made much of it hard to decipher.
An artist created this elk.
Some of these look ancient.
A buffalo? So many unanswered questions.
Teepee Rocks
The oldest graffiti signature we could find.
Sego Lily (Calochortus nutallii)
Flexible Milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus)
Anderson Larkspur (Delphinium andersonii)
Western Blue Flag (Iris missouriensis)
We also headed to Camas Prairie Centennial Marsh for our yearly look at camas lilies. We were shocked at what a bad year they were having. What were having a good year were the Mormon Crickets. Creepy!
Small Camas Lily (Camassia quamash)
Our other trip was to Craters of the Moon National Monument. We wanted to see the spotted fritillary. We found some nice ones, but the numbers were down from last year. Other flowers were in abundance.
Miniature Monkeyflower (Erythranthe suckdorfii)
Dwarf Purple Monkeyflower (Diplacus nanus)
Both together
These hills are covered with flowers. Most so small, they are hard to see.
Silverleaf Phacelia (Phacelia hastata)
Spotted Fritillary (Fratillaria atropurpurea)
Spotted Fritillary (Fratillaria atropurpurea)
Cushion Buckwheat (Eriogonum ovalifolium)
Brandegee's Onion (Allium brandegeei)
Indian Tunnel and Dewdrop Cave lava tubes were open, so we spent some time exploring those as well.
