The Big Island Part 2

After lunch, we got to go to the main attraction of our tour: Volcanoes National Park. Volcanoes National Park is a huge area, and takes up a major portion of the island. They started by taking us to an overlook in the front of the park, where we could see the steam venting out of one of the main fissures in the park.

The park is up at a higher elevation, and as such is actually quite a bit cooler in temperature than the majority of the islands.  From the lookout we walked about a quarter of a mile through a fairly lush group of trees, and to the entrance of the Thurston Lava Tube. I can't really explain it as well as Wikipedia, so here's the link to that page.

A bit of a blurry shot from inside the lava tube.

 We then went to another steam vent before heading for the visitors' center. Brynn (and nearly everyone else) cheesing it up at one point or another.

Brynn cheesing it up :)

From the visitors' center, you can see the main fissure of the volcano, but of course at a much further distance. This is actually the second visitors' center, as the first one was within a 1/4 mile of where that particular fissure is now spewing smoke. Thankfully at the time it started erupting was at 2 in the morning, so there were no injuries from the new eruption.

As Brynn put it, me blowing my top

The volcano was extremely interesting, but the better views were actually later on. But first, they took us to another feature I'd never seen before, a black sand beach near Kalapana.

The beaches are formed by the volcanic dust related to the new eruptions, and are an extremely cool sight to see. As the tour guide put it, we were standing on the newest land in the world, and even younger than us.

The final stop on the tour was out to the lava flows at Kalapana. This is the area where the lava continues to flow, and has done so for years. There used to be housing out in the area, but over time a lot of them have been taken by the lava flow. However, some still remain, and are even trying to move the properties still.

Out in front of some property in danger of the lava flow.

We were lucky enough to see a couple of breaks which caused some lava to show on the surface.

Taken from about 200-300 feet away approximately (not sure)

Overall, it was an extremely interesting trip, and the fact that we were able to see some lava flow before leaving was extremely cool. The tour bus took us back to Hilo's airport, where we were able to get a snack at the one dining counter/refrigerator before flying back to Oahu. All in all, it was extremely interesting, even in spite of the poor performance at lunch. It was just so cool to see not only the black sand beaches but also the newest land being formed out there.