Hawaiian Volcanoes!

Hey all,

So, funny enough we’re kind of in the middle of no-where on the Big Island of Hawaii. We’re located 30 miles from Hilo and 96 miles from Kona, however, we have wireless internet. Go figure. Anyway, time for a bit of a longer blog.

Today, we headed to the Dormant Volcanoes Mauna Loa and Kilauea. What an amazing experience… The first thing we did was drive up a road to 6000+ ft. The volcano tops out at around ~13,000 feet so not really that close to the top. The road was kinda neat as it was paved but one lane and SUPER curvy with tons of blind corners for about 10 miles. When we got to the top we were a bit disappointed with the view. We’d like to hike the other 7,000 ft but ‘apparently’ it’s a 3-4 day hike.

The rest of the day we toured around Kilauea and saw Steam Vents (which occur when the rain water seeps through the earth, reaches hot rocks, evaporates, creates steam and comes out the cracks in the earth.  See I even learned something today). We also saw some sulfur something or other… I’d give more details but let’s just say it didn’t smell like roses and we didn’t do much reading. We also drove down this road to the ocean where lava used to flow. Unfortunately no lava is flowing right now but we were able to see all the destruction of the lava. It’s so neat the way the lava just goes and takes out whatever is in it’s way (roads, trees, vegetation, signs, etc…). At one point a road used to be where the lava flows and you can see exactly where the lava just flowed right over the road and kept on going.

Yesterday, we went to the black sand beach of Punalu’u. The beach is apparently visited by turtles quite often but no turtles for us. We’ll check it out tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, we’re off to Kona. It’s a bit of a drive at ~ 100 miles but we really want to snorkel, explore, see the coffee plantations and do some xmas shopping. Yes, xmas shopping. The plan is to set a time (30 minutes), price ($30) and quality (no useless sH$t) for our xmas exchange. Kinda like me, simple but fun. That’s our plan for our first Mele Kalikikmaka.

The place we’re staying is called the Crater Rim Cabin and let’s just say the name doesn’t really disappoint. We’re literally on the edge of the national park and volcano fault lines go through the property. They have a fault line crack that is about 15ft deep, let’s just say it’s not ‘kid’ friendly. The place even has a lava tube that you can shimmy your way down to go through the tube. Not sure if we’ll find time to get in the tube as we’ve jam packed our “relaxation.”
OH! and don’t ask us why we’re not ‘more tanned’ or ‘browner’ we’re in the middle of a rain forest, can see snow on the top of the volcano and haven’t been to the beach in two days. Rough I know… but it’s a pretty chilly 15C. We even have the propane fireplace going in the cabin.

Lots of love,

Jeff & Lindsay

ps. Pics are on their way (hopefully tonight).