Today we spent most of the day exploring the Hawai'i Volcano National Park. The Big Island is home to five volcanoes: one is extinct, two are dormant, one is active, and the other one, Kilauea, is very active. We spent most of today learning about and hiking on Kilauea. Our first stop is a scenic view along the rim of the caldera. From this lookout we could see steam and sulfer dioxide smoke billowing out of a crater called Halema'uma'u. Although we could not see the lava in the crater, this is apparently the real deal. There's a bubbling floor of lava a few hundred feet down in there. Not only that, it had just erupted at the beginning of the month and doubled the diameter of the crater. The downside of this is that it emitted too much poisonous gas for many of the cool trails and roads to be open.

As it turned out there were still enough great trails to keep us busy until Marion required down time. First we did a short hike through a lava tube. This is a channel where the lava once flowed under the surface of the hardened rock, but the source dried up. Once all of the lava flows out, it leaves a cavernous tunnel which we now get to walk through courtesy of the Department of the Interior.

Across the street of the lava tube was a trail down the side of the crater down to the crater floor. This is a second, smaller crater (called Kilauea Iki) to the east of the main caldera. The interesting thing about this crater is that it was a lava lake a little less than 50 years ago, and it took about 35 years to cool completely. From the lookout point we could see people that looked like specks of dust walking across the bottom of the crater. It was only a couple of miles to get down there, so we decided to give it a go. We were almost there when Jackie stepped on a tree root the wrong way and twisted her ankle. She slowly started to walk back up while I ran down to the bottom with Marion on my back. When I got there a snapped a few quick pictures and started running back up. I caught up with Jackie about 2/3 of the way back up and showed her what we saw down there. It was a pretty cool landscape. The three of us slowly walked back to the top.

After the hiking and the injury we decided to go to the warm pond a few miles down the road from our bungalow. We discovered this place at the end of Day 2 and decided to go back at the end of this long day at the volcano. This pond is heated by natural springs that pass near the underground magma, and it is cooled by the ocean which flows into it from the other side–the water was probably around 95F. Just what the doctor ordered after day of hiking.

the Geracis at a smoking crater on the Kiluea volcano

Halema'uma'u crater at Kiluea

                 
Marion runs and laughs at the rim of the volcano

the Geracis stroll trrough a lava tube

Marion and Jesse pose in the bottom of the Kiluea Iki crater

the Geracis take in the view from the rim of the Kiluea Iki crater

relaxing in the warm pond

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Posted in Main Page by Jesse 1 Comment