Volcanoes!

Our three day weekend at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park easily goes down as one of the most memorable experiences in my life. It was incredible to see earth that was still alive! Almost everywhere you went in the park there was hot steam billowing out of the ground. And then there was the lava!

We stayed in the park at Volcano House which is a rustic cabin-like hotel perched on the cliff-edge of the Kilauea crater. It was cold and rainy when we got there on Saturday, so we decided to walk through the Thurston Lava Tube where we could stay mostly dry. The first part of the cave had lights and it was full of people, but halfway down there was a gate where the lights stopped. We had brought flashlights, so we went through the gate and explored the cave further. There was not one single person beyond the gate besides us so it was kind of scary/exciting. I mean here we were hiking down an unlit lava tube all by ourselves on an active volcano!

The next day we spent some time driving around the Kilauea Crater looking down into it from every direction. One really cool place we visited was the aptly named Steaming Bluff. I’d describe it, but I don’t need to because I took a couple videos of it! Slippers and Warmer Than Portland. We also walked to an area called Sulfur Banks where the steam came out of the ground tainted with stinky sulfur. The rocks near the steam holes were all white and yellow, and there were crystals that had formed from the sulfur steam.

But the highlight of the trip was definitely the lava! Our first evening at the park, we drove to the end of Chain of Craters road where the lava overran the road a few years back. Fortunately it wasn’t raining down by the coast, so we decided to hike out to the fresh lava. The hike was grueling; 3.5 miles each way over crumbly, uneven lava fields in the dark. The trip out was tiring but we didn’t notice it too much because we were excited about what we might see. The hike back was truly a painful joyless trudge, but it was SO worth it.

Worth it because we got within 10 feet of red hot lava! We were able to walk right up to it and watch it slowly flow across the rocks. The air was incredibly hot and full of sulfur so you couldn’t stay close for long. We’d move up to check it out, but then we’d have to retreat just so we could breathe. We also saw lava flowing straight into the ocean! Here is a video I took of the flowing lava… It was really windy, so the camera gets blown around a bunch, but you can still see how awesome it was! I was really amazed by how much lava we were able to see. I figured we’d see it way off in the distance, but we were able to walk right up to it. What an incredible experience!