Badlands

Yellowstone's calderas have erupted, a super volcano that traps Brad Garner's family, in his absence, in nearby Idaho.

 

Soul sick and feeling he's lost everything, Garner heads from New Mexico north into the ash-strewn wasteland on a daring, possibly rash and foolhardy rescue mission, joined only by a stray dog named Tanya.

 

Along the way he meets a part Ute, Hispanic Indian who distinguished himself in Iraq and tends toward peyote inspired spiritual journeys, as well as two federal "fish wildlife" officials who are close-mouthed about their actual mission to the epicenter. They might be intimately involved in an artificial intelligence experiment to study the deadly super volcano.