July 30, 2010-Day 211

I just realized that I am now a full month behind on my blog. Yikes. I really don't know how I am going to catch up, especially since I still have 1,000+ photos to go weed through from my vacation. The photos from this day along took me two full days to edit, so it will be another long post.

On the 30th, we went to Volcano National Park, which is centered around Kilauea Volcano, which is actually still active and is currently erupting. First we drove around the crater rim.







Then we did what was supposed to be a quick .75 mile hike at the steam vents, but we must have taken a wrong turn some place, because I think we wound up hiking a couple of miles through a rain forest. We didn't mind, though, because it was really pretty and peaceful, and full of weird plants that we had never seen before.

Here's a steam vent:



And some of the rain forest:



















I thought this plant was pretty cool. It went from this:



To this:



To this:



Next, we drove down the Chain of Craters to a Lava Tube, which is basically a cave created by lava. The first part was slightly illuminated, but the second part was pitch black, so we were glad that we had a flashlight with us.









We then continued along to the Chain of Craters until we got the starting point for the Pu'u Loa Petroglyphs hike, which was a two mile round trip on top of cooled lava.







Pu'u Loa Petroglyphs Field is sacred to the people of Hawaii. Ancient Hawaiians would hike there to bury the umbilical cord of their child in order to bring good luck to their child. They would then carve a symbol into the ground to record that they were there.





After we returned to the car, we continued to drive along the Chain of Craters, stopping at all of the lookouts along the way.



One of the things that amazed us was how life could grow out of lava.





At the bottom of the Chain of Craters, we were treated with a beautiful view of the ocean below the cliffs.










The water was pretty violent and we got sprayed while I was taking these photos.



That night, we drove down to Pahoa where we could see the lava flowing at night. ALthough we were quite far away, we decided to stay in the area that was considered safe. We felt lucky to see the lava flowing at all since it hadn't really been flowing in a few years and it had only started again a few weeks before we got there. Here is one of the lava:



This is steam from the lava hitting the ocean:

July 29, 2010-Day 210

On July 29, 2010, we flew from Oahu to the Big Island, and we we drove to our first hotel in Volcano via the southern route of the island. Along the way, we decided to take a detour so that we could see the southern most point of the island, which is also the southern most point of the United States.

Along the detour, we passed Old Kamoa Wind Farm.





We also passed some farms. We got the feeling that a lot of cars didn't pass through there often because all of the animals seemed very interested in us.







We also passed this, which reminded us of the X-Files.



And here is the South Point. People actually jump off of that cliff and then climb up a thin ladder, which I personally think is insane.



From there, were drove to a Punalu'u Beach, a black sand beach. The sand is black because it is made from crushed up volcanic rocks.

July 28, 2010-Day 209

Hawaii is 6 hours behind Eastern Standard Time, so we woke up early each morning, and I mean early. This is what the sky looked like when we woke up.



I kind of liked it, though. It was very peaceful and we usually drank tea and ate breakfast out on our lanai while we watched the surfers.



I know I have discussed the virtues of the Canon 55-250 before, but I just want to point it out again. Both of the above photos were taken with this lens. Our hotel was actually 1 1/2 blocks from the beach and the surfers were out quite a bit into the ocean. And obviously the moon is really far away, but, if you look on the lower (our) left side of the moon, you can see craters. This is really a great lens if you don't want to (or can't) spend the money on L glass.

Because we were up so early, we got the first bus to Hanauma Bay where went snorkeling. Because we were swimming, I only took my p&s with me, and I didn't really take that many photos anyway since I had already taken some on the 26th. But here are a couple from that day.