Aloha! Part 2

We also made a trip down to the southeast side of the island to visit the volcano.  Every piece of advertising literature that you see for the island has a picture of molten lava bubbling up out of a volcano or sheets of red lava flowing into the sea. I really wanted to see some lava.

 

You don't typically see road signs with distances to a Volcano on them.  Also note the lava rock wall behind it.  There are a lot of walls like this around the island.

Before I delve further into the volcano trip, let me talk about the beaches, or lack thereof.  This was yet another of my pre-visit images that didn’t quite pan out. Because of the young volcanic nature of the big island, a lot of the shoreline isn't the soft white/yellow sand beaches that I am used to from growing up on the east coast.  Instead, a lot of the shore line is just volcanic rock right up to the ocean.  However, dispersed around the island were small pockets of beaches that were closer to what I am used to. We found a pebble beach covered with small, smooth pebbles and we also spent a few hours sitting on a more typical plain sand beach. When I was reviewing our route to the volcano, and I saw locations for black sand and green sand beaches along the way, so I decided that we would stop at each of those along the way.

The pebble beach

The map showed that the green sand beach was near the southern most point in the USA, so we decided to check that out too. I was expecting some sort of bronze marker or monument, but there wasn’t any that we could see.  We improvised and just made a SWAG (Scientific Wild A$$ Guess) about where it looked like it was the most southern point. Not very precise, but neat to say that we were there. We then drove over to the nearby parking lot for the green sand beach, only to find out that it was an additional 3 miles of hiking or 4x4 driving to get to the beach. The econo-can chevy sonic that we rented wasn’t going to handle the off road driving and I, of course, had scheduled a lot of stuff to see into that day's itinerary, so we decided that there wasn't time for a 6 mile round trip hike. We passed on the hike and got back into the car to continue on towards our other points of interest, the black sand beach and the volcano. You’d think that they would tell you in the travel books that it wasn’t that easy to get to the green sand beach, but I digress…

The southern most point in the USofA

After passing the “southern most” bar and the “southern most” post office in the USA, we decided to stop at the “southern most” bakery in the USA for lunch. After lunch we continued on towards the black sand beach.

 

We found the black sand beach and went for a quick stroll… the CFO proclaimed that it looked “dirty” and I could tell that she wasn’t impressed.  I thought it was pretty cool, but raised another question for me:  I don’t quite understand how the regular sand all ends up on one beach, all the pebbles on another, the black on another and the green on yet another location?You’d think they would all just get mixed up together, into a mish-mash of baby poop colored sand, but somehow nature has managed to segregate them all. I find that very fascinating, but maybe that’s just me. I didn’t realize there was such racism in beaches… can’t the sands all just get along?

 

The black sand beach

 

We loaded back into the car and continued on towards the volcano… I was starting to get excited, I could almost smell the lava.  Then, as we started climbing up in elevation from sea level, the skies started to darken.  Then it started to mist and, by the time we had climbed up to about 3,500 feet above sea level, it was raining, foggy and cold. According to the car's display, the outside temperature had dropped from 76 degrees to 55 degrees. This was not looking good for our volcano visit…

We went ahead and paid the $10 to get into the national park and drove up to the visitor’s center. We ran through the rain into the building and talked with one of the rangers. She confirmed that it didn’t look like the weather was going to lift, so hiking the lava fields was out. Bummer. She suggested that we at least go up to the museum that was perched on the rim of the crater, so we got back into the car and drove up to that building.

That is when the disappointment really started to set in, as the clouds and fog pretty much fully obscured the entire view into the crater. I was totally bummed because we had travelled all this way (about 2.5 hour drive), and forgone the hike to the green sand beach so that we could get there, and all we could see was clouds, fog and rain. The CFO opted to stay inside the building while I ventured out into the rain and onto the overlook, just to see if I could see anything of interest. I caught a couple of short, 2-3 second breaks in the passing clouds where I could see some steam rising up, but not much else.    I walked back into the building and was greeted by the CFO giggling.  Yes, she was laughing at the situation and my visible disappointment.  This kind crap (freak weather, bad timing, etc.) always to happens to me when I really want to see or do something and she seems to find that amusing. Isn't she sweet?

Who ordered up the rain and clouds?!?!   Where is the crater?

We had seen a lot of photos of lava flowing into the ocean, so we looked at some maps and informational signage at the visitors center to see where we needed to go to see that.  We knew that it wasn't raining at the lower elevations, so there was still a chance to salvage the day and see some lava.  OR NOT.  It turns out that the closest that you can get to that spectacle is about 1 mile away, so all you really see is a red glow over the horizon. SERIOUSLY??? I see all of these advertising photos of molten rock oozing into the sea and the closest that I can actually get to it about 1 mile away??? If I didn't know that the National Parks System was so dramatically underfunded, I would have asked for freakin money back!   I'll just consider it a charitable donation, because I definitely didn't get my moneys worth out of it.  They seriously need to revamp their advertising, because it is totally false.  I really do understand the safety issues in letting people get too close to 2000 degree liquid earth, but 1 mile seems a little excessive. We made one last stop at a nearby “steam vent” where you could stand in the warm steam that was coming out of an opening in the rock. That was neat to experience, but it sure wasn’t the molten lava flow that I was hoping for. At this point, she was cold and I was disappointed, so we headed back to our hotel.

Steam venting out of the earth (they built an ugly railing around it)

We bought a few souvenirs along the way, including our traditional Christmas ornament souvenir. At the rate that we are going, our tree will eventually be decorated entirely with souvenir ornaments from all of our trips.  I will admit that it is fun to reminisce about our travels every time we decorate the tree.  We also purchased a glass piece that was made by a local artist. She makes molds of interesting lava flows and then casts colorful glass into the molds. The face of the end product takes on the texture of the lava and looks/feels interesting. 

Even though the volcano excursion was a bust, and even though the island didn’t match up with some of my preconceived ideas, we had a really nice trip. I would like to go back to the big island again, just to try to see the volcano on a clear day and to go star gazing at the observatory on top of the mountain.  Unfortunately for me, our next planned vacation isn't until November... I'm not sure I can go that long without another trip!