3/2 A Day of Hiking Among the Volcanoes

As you can see from yesterday's and today's blogs, I am having trouble with Navigator again and am using Safari. For some reason, the print is HUGE! You may want to read them from across the room. We got to the park early this morning and did the Kilauea Iki trail first. The trail started at the crater’s rim (almost 4000 feet) and dropped 400 feet (the height of a 40 story building) before ending on the bed of a fairly dormant lava lake. I say fairly dormant as the eruption here was in 1959, but there are still active steam vents on the surface. We had a wonderful hike (4.8 miles round trip). Part of it was along the rim in the rain forest where we were serenaded by small red Hawaiian honey sucker birds. We then descended to the floor of the “lake” bed and walked across the hardened crust (see pic of lake bed with old volcano on one side and new volcano erupting in the distance). We found some golden strands of what looked like hair, but is actually spun lava – it was very cool. We went over and stood next to a steam vent (see photo) – but not too close – and the air was definitely hot. I imagine you could burn yourself if you got too close. When we got back to the car, we had an early lunch of crackers and cheese and then drove partway down the Crater Rim road to the Mauna Ulu eruption site. This eruption took place in 1969 and did not stop erupting until 1974! We took some pictures of lava covered tree trunks (see above) and climbed up to the top of a volcano cone (only 210 feet – no biggie after this morning) to see a great view of Mauna Ulu. We were amazed at the tenacity of life: many small trees and ferns were growing in the cracks of the lava (see photo). It was really quite remarkable. Our “dogs” were tired by the time we came back to the car as this was a 3.5 mile hike, but no respite from the rain forest. We were walking on black lava surface with lots of sunshine – very hot and tiring. We headed back to Hilo, but stopped for a short visit to an orchid farm. I didn’t know orchids came in so many shapes, sizes and colors! They were beautiful. We are doing laundry now and will go out in a bit for dinner. Hopefully it will be to a restaurant that is far enough away to drive to – I think we are both too tired to walk!