Bonus Episode: Bruneau Dunes, Craters of the Moon, & John Day Fossil Beds

In April, my family flew to Salt Lake City to pick up a campervan we bought and road-tripped home. We stopped in Bruneau Dunes State Park in Idaho, Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve also in Idaho, and John Day Fossil Bed National Monument.It was a quick but lovely trip, and I recorded reflections each night of our trip to share about our experience and what we learned. Visiting the less grandiose-seeming public lands (state parks and national monuments), I realized how much I miss just by looking to visit national parks. Bruneau Dunes, especially, was a sweet find because they have an observatory where they host evening programming on weekends from Spring to Fall. Craters of the Moon was super cool as well, and was where I found one of the best interpretive signs created in partnership with the local tribes, the Shoshone-Bannock. And the John Day Fossil Beds had some wild rocks and an incredible fossil museum in their visitor center.Have you been to any of these spots? What other state parks and national monuments do you think we miss?Note: If you’re listening to this in only audio form, you can check out some footage from our trip (with some other stock footage to fill out the space, lol) on Substack.Thanks for reading Charm of the Wilderness! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit charmofthewilderness.substack.com