Hawaii Vaca, Post 18 - Hawai'i Volcanoes Ntnl Park, Pt. 4

We're about ready to close the chapter on our fantastic volcano adventure!  Frankly, I would have liked to do some additional hiking after a brief rest, but the kids were growling about being tired and hungry.  When they get hungry, nothing else matters... 😜

So after we finished up on the hike across the basin, it was time to start making our way back up the walls of the volcano.  As you can see in the pic, the sun was nice and bright and made being able to see the obstacles of the path a little bit dicey.  Happy to say, we all made it without much injury!

Mama working her way up the hill.  The kid in the red shirt belongs to the family that took our picture at the end of the basin hike (seen in Part 3).

There's Calebber McCheese who, if you'll properly note, is no longer running!  He is tired and hungry.  The joy of the hike is lost on him at this point.

The pictures of the local fauna do not do justice to how beautiful it truly is!

Uh oh, now he's starting to take rests!  We must fuel this boy UP!!!

That's not real encouraging...

You'd hike and hike and hike until you came up to the next corner on the trail.  Work your way around said corner and you're rewarded with a view as such, indicating that you will be hiking and hiking and hiking for a good while yet!  Every corner like this was more and more discouraging to a couple of very hungry little varmints! 

But we made it out eventually and (luckily) found bathrooms not too far from where we exited our hike back into the parking lot that is still quite a good distance from our car.  So what did we decide to do?  Even against the berating of the two hungry critters, we decided that we should do the short hike of the Thurston Lava Tube.  They were NOT happy.

There's a HECKUVA drop on either side of that little walkway entering the tube!  Best as you pay attention!

That's a shot looking straight down which I would hanker a guess at being about 50 - 60 feet as the vegetation is fairly tall too.

That's Caleb (in yellow) and Robby (in the black shorts) entering the mouth of the tube.  There was a unique smell that I simply cannot describe.  It wasn't a bad smell at all, but I would not have described it as pleasant either.  Maybe just wet vegetation (and a hint of sulphur, which is never pleasant on it's own) that I'm not familiar with.

Cool stuff!!!  We missed the Mt. St. Helens lava tubes a few years back so this was extra interesting to me. Lava tubes are a type of lava cave formed when a low-viscosity lava flow develops a continuous and hard crust, which thickens and forms a roof above the still-flowing lava stream. Tubes form in one of two ways: by the crusting over of lava channels, and from pāhoehoe flows where the lava is moving under the surface.

And this is the end of our volcanic adventure.  This is where you come up to ground-level from the tube.

We still had a bit of a hike to get back to our car, but that portion was only around the upper rim of the volcano so not too many ups-and-downs.  From there, we headed back to a restaurant that overlooks the steam vent that we saw in the post about the visitors center.  

Truly an amazing day!!

"When In Rome", Act Like the Orthodontist

What a difference a few years makes!  He would have been screaming, wailing and flailing about with not nearly enough people to hold him down.  Now, not so much...  :-)

Hawaii Vaca, Post 17 - Hawai'i Volcanoes Ntnl Park, Pt. 3

So the next part of our adventure through Volcanoes National Park is the hike across the basin floor of this particular lava basin. 

After our lovely pic in the previous post on this subject, of Mom and Caleb making their way down to the basin floor, we start to focus on the landscape that we're about to traverse!

It looks so simple, correct?  Not so!  Make sure you stop when you want to take in the sights surrounding you or you'll find yourself face down in a hurry!

Calebber amongst the rough terrain!

This is where we just came from.  Those people in the middle of the photo kind of give you a reference to scale!

This is where we're going...  Can you find Mama and Caleb in the picture?  It's like a family version of the game, "Where's Waldo?".

and here...

and a beautiful little Chinese boy amid the rough terrain.

When the wind stops blowing, you gasp for air because of how hot it immediately gets, but then, you encounter plants that are growing up thru the volcanic rock such as these.  Seeing where "stuff" can grow gives an interesting perspective on life in general!

Robby, taking careful steps because if you don't, shame on you and all of your injuries!

Rongbo the fantastic in a similar situation!

VICTORY!!

Walking across areas like this were slightly unnerving!

Some more perspective on the size of everything.

Caleb and Mama as we're reaching the 3/4 mark of the basin.

More amazing vegetation in the middle of wastelands.

Almost home!  Which truly means that we have a HUGE uphill hike and more...

We made it!

A close up to prove that we made it!

Cold vs. Cozy

Hey baby, it's cold outside! We've been mostly below zero for temps since Christmas day and it grows old after a little while! The skin gets dry (dryer than it already was!),  the front door freezes shut and various other weird malady's.  

But within that, there are some good things that happen as well.  What are they?  

Well, glad you asked!

This was Mother Natures painting that we found on our front door during one of the coldest days.

The ferocious hound, Juno, after being covered up by Robby to ensure that she was warm enough!

And again, the ghastly beast taking a nap on my lap as I watched football and over-consumed.

So the cold ain't all bad....

Hawaii Vaca, Post 16 - Hawai'i Volcanoes Ntnl Park, Pt. 2

So, we made it thru the visitor center in the previous post and after another bit of driving, albeit, a MUCH shorter trip, we're ready for our hike!

I had no idea until looking at this picture, that we were only about 1.5 - 2 miles away from the steam vents that we saw from the visitor center. We hiked the smaller basin off to the right of the photo.

Over on the upper right'ish corner, the green marker from google maps is marking the Kiluaea Iki Trailhead,  which is basically where we parked the rental vehicle and began our hike.  We took that upper path across the top of the pic and basically turned left until you can see that little squiggely switch-back type path on the far left.  Obviously, that's where the trail descended to the basin floor.

This is one of the first views that you come to when the trees start to open up!  You can see the steam vent in the background here.

Just a bit further on up the trail with a similar view.  This time, however, you can see the path (the lighter colored line) on the basin floor.  In real life, you could see tiny, tiny people down there too, but I can't see them in the pic.  It hadn't hit me yet, that it was going to be us down there after quite bit of time has passed!

So what does a trail on the top of a volcano rim look like?  Something like this!

This freaked me out a bit...  This is the edge of the trail, looking straight down the wall of the crater rim! I'm not afraid of heights but Mr. Calebber had asked if he could hike on up ahead and we had allowed it. When he says hike, he really means something betwixt jogging & running!  We established a rule that he was not to get two trail markers ahead of us at any time. If he did, he was to wait until one of us caught up with him.  What occurred to me at this point is that a fella traveling a trail at his speed would have a much greater chance of missing said markers.  And then, there's warnings on some of the trails about "false floors" (I forget the Hawai'ian name).  But they are dead/dying vegetation laying on the tops of certain types of trees and people mistake it for terra firma...  but usually only once. 

The steam vents again as we're making our way across the top of the rim.

That's Robby up ahead.  At this point, we haven't seen Caleb for probably 10 minutes and there's an uneasy feeling about that very fact.

Eventually, we found him waiting at one of the markers and we restated our rules to only include one marker and that he was to be VERY careful.  As you can see in the photo, he's running...

Hey!  Now we can tell that we're making progress as that big bald rocky area is moving around to behind us on our travels!

Even better, we've rounded a corner and can now see the area in which we started.  This view also provides a much clearer perspective of the "bowl".

I kept taking pictures of this formation without ever considering the fact that we'd be right down by it in another 1/2 hour or so.

Had a great big, wide opening at the turning point to descend which provided a nice shot over looking the MUCH larger basin (from that top map picture).

THANK GOD FOR RAILINGS!!!  That was a drop!

And down we go!  That's Caleb with Mom now.  He's got his blue sweatshirt tucked in the backpack because he was hot, presumably from all the dang running!

That's Dad and Robby from Mom and Caleb's perspective.

It took me a bit to figure it out, but these steps reminded me of a place or something...  It was the unevenness about them. One step might have been only three inches high, the next 12 inches.   Oh yes!  It was the Great Wall of China on that snowy morning in 2011!  The temp was quite different, but the capacity to do something wildly stupid and painful was similar!

There's running boy, all smiles and happy (ie, he's not hungry... yet.).

We made it to the basin floor!!  Mom and Caleb dressing up the next portion of our hike.  It's much hotter down here!

So, without having gone thru the remaining pictures in the folder, I think the next post will wrap up the posts about Volcanoes National Park, but there may be an additional one about the Thurston Lava Tube that we did after this hike.  Not that either boy was happy about that...