Hawaii pt. 3: Volcanoes National Park

The day started off a little drizzly, but we headed out to explore the park anyway.  We hiked along part of the Crater Rim Trail to see the steam vents.  It was such a pretty trail, even with the rain, which sort of came and went.  Emma really like the steam because it was warm.

My view from under my umbrella.

More steam vents.

It was so fun wandering through this area with all the steam rising everywhere.

And I loved all the vegetation.

The drizzle seemed to be stopping, so we decided to drive down Chain of Craters Road, which takes you past quite a few older, non-active craters.  You can wander all over the place along these craters and over the lava fields.  Some craters were more recent while others were old enough that they were filled with trees and plants and other growth.  It was amazing to see all the volcanic activity that had occurred here.  Later in the day as we wandered over some of the lava fields, we felt obligated to attempt to play the ultimate game of lava monsters.  Unfortunately there weren't many "safe" spots to stand.  =)

Another crater down the road that seemed to still be breathing life.

How enchanting is this path?  How could you not follow it? 

One of many lava fields.  They were fun to explore.

This crater is full of trees and growth.

Emma was snapping pictures all the time.  Love my little budding photographer. 

Another lava field. 

Love seeing the ocean and coast in the distance.

Probably our very favorite little hike of the day was seeing the Thurston Lava Tube.  It's an underground channel where lava once flowed, leaving a hollow tube.  We hiked down the steep trail in the middle of a rain forest to get to it.  It was so amazing here.  It seemed almost too perfect to be real.  I had to remind myself that we weren't in some kind of fake, ideal rain forest setting that had been made to illustrate this type of climate and environment in a museum or at a zoo or some other place, but that we were actually here.

Once we got down to the lava tube we walked through it.  Because it had been raining the ceiling of the tube was dripping in places, which I think kind of added to the atmosphere.  Seeing all the lava fields and the hardened lava is really cool, but seeing this, where there was no old lava, but simply where lava had been, that this was created by the sheer force and existence of the lava flow, was incredible.

After coming out the other end of the tube, we climbed some stairs and then headed back up another path through more magnificent rain forest.  The birds seemed almost deafening at times, and there were some huge spider webs shimmering in the sun with the remaining water from the rain glistening on them.  Fortunately we didn't accidentally walked through any of them as they were along the sides of the path.

Next we stopped at the Pu'u Loa Petroglyphs.  There was a mixture of trail and boardwalk surrounding a couple miles of varying petroglyphs.  The boardwalks are there to make it easier to see some of them.  The added elevation helped the view.

When we reached the end of Crater Rim Drive we walked along the coastal cliffs.  The view was magnificent.  Then we walked further along the road (it's closed off to cars past this point, but is open for walking for a ways) to see where former lava flows covered and blocked the road.

As we neared the end of the road, this is looking back up the hill at the path the lava took. 

So apparently lava will cause a road to be closed.  Who knew?  =)

There are two visitor centers in the park, the main Kilauea Visitor Center close to the entrance to the park, and the Jaggar Museum which sits on the rim of the Kilauea Caldera overlooking the Halema'uma'u Crater, which is still active.  Both centers have videos and displays etc, that are worth seeing, as well as souvenirs you will end up buying too many of.  At Halema'uma'u Crater you can see smoke rising from the center during the day and then at night you can see it glowing red from the burning lava deep within.  This was so fantastic to see.  We went earlier in the day, later in the evening when it was starting to get dark, and then again at 1:00 in the morning.  We got up to go and have the overlook all to ourselves.  It was cold with the blowing wind, but worth it for the glowing.

This was earlier in the day.  It's glowing here, but you can't see the glow during the day. 

Here it is glowing.  In full disclosure, I did not take this picture.  I found it online.  We didn't have a tripod with us, so our pictures of the glow didn't turn out quite so crisp.  But I wanted you to see how fabulous it was.  The glow was even more pronounced later in the middle of the night when we went back.