Thinking strategically (or trying to) we decided that an Easter Sunday drive to the volcano would be a good bet to avoid crowds - and we were right.
We left the condo at 7:45 and knew it was going to be a long/slow drive. Most of the highway is 35 mph and it's kind of like 1 or 101, without many passing lanes. Good part is there weren't many cars to pass. I read aloud (asking first) from the guidebook to give a mile by mile narrative -- pausing at the hairy parts of the road.
The road goes through small towns attempting to be touristy - think Wheeler OR with small kona coffee and macadamia nut "farms" along the way.
At the town farthest south, we saw "Southern Most Bar in the United States" -- but we didn't stop. A road veers off there to the southern most tip of the island, but we were focused on volcano destination so we passed.
The guidebooks said to stop off at the visitor center first. That pesky sulfur diozide closes parts of the park and they have the scoop on what's safe.
Nice NPS volunteers patiently took group by group and gave suggestions for the visit. The rim drive for Kilauea was closed becuse of the gas and it was raining at the visitor center so we took the Chain of Craters road down the flank to the ocean and the end of the road. It used to be a loop, but a fairly recent lava flow (I'll look up the date) covered the road and wiped out about homes and a subdivision. One guy is left and has to cross the pahoehoe & aa (geology talk and good for crossword puzzles) to get to his home. We hiked the .5 ish from the barrier to the end of the road and took Tower of Pisa type photos for later comic relief. A short trail leads to a view of a sea arch. Posters at the shelter reassuringly show how whole hunks (like BIG hunks) of this fall off into the ocean occasionally. There was an emergency phone there, but if the land was falling off I'm not so sure what good the phone does.
Then we drove back up the road to a petroglyph trail, .7 miles across pahoehoe (uneven trail, but at leas it was flat) to a place where there are 23,000 petroglyphs. Some of them are single holes, made by families for their babies' umbilical cords. Others were holes with circles around the holes. There were a few clearly human forms, a bug, a turtle. The weather close to the crater (4000 feet) was clearing by then so we drove back up the road to Kilauea Iki - a crater formed in 1959 when Kileaua blew (again). Geologists knew an eruption was coming and they expected it in the big crater, but instead, it blew out of kilauea iki, a forested crater and filled it 400 feet full of lava that sloshed around and left a bathrtub ring. We had lunch in the parking lot and then laced up the walking shoes for a 4-mile hike 400 around the crater rim through tropical (classicly tropical) rainforest and 400 feet down the crater wall and back up.
From the top, you can see the tiny ant hikers crossing the crater. In spots, a few vents puffed a little smoke and at one side you can see the hole where the lava blew out. (called Pu'u Pua'i) Think a little Crater Lake, but without the water. We hiked along with 2 couples from Spokane for a while and agreed that parts of the hike were very Cascades like, but with different plants.
The hike comes out at a trail head for a lava tube (oh, and a full parking lot by that time). We have hiked in lava tubes and seen steam vents before so we passed on those two and went on to the Kilauea overlook. Another "wow" sight.
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/KIcam/
This is where the Goddess Pele lives. The museum has a jumpsuit and boots that were worn by a geologist who was walking around in Kileaua when it was oozing/bubbling in 1985. He took a wrong step and fell through the crust, spending a few months in the hospital. Thigh down the suit was in shreds.
Note to geologists: watch where you step.
The NPS and USGS haven't figured out how to turn the lava on and off, so we didn't get to see any today... except in videos.
We turned around from there and headed home, returning to our condo by 5ish and an evening of reading (and listening to the next door neighbor's party) and plotting the next days' adventure.
We are also enjoying radio stations - one "All Native All the Time" plays a combo of Hawaiian rap, Hawaiian country, Hawaiian reggae - oh, and Hawaiian Christian. Not much of a play list even with all those. We started recognizing the songs on Day 2. Lyrics were generally "Everything is gonna beeeee all right. Everything is gonna beeeee all right...." So, the message was good anyway.
On the way home yesterday, we found a station that was IN Hawaiian with much more "authentic" (sounding anyway) music.
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