Volcanoes National Park

Today we started with breakfast at the coffee shack which is right on the way to the volcanoes National Park. Interesting place, you eat basically hanging over the side of steep hill that is covered in vegetation. Deb made friends with a lizard that was hanging out on the window frame, feeding it jelly from the little container it was in. Food was OK, my coffee was pretty good.

From there we drove out to Volcanoes National Park. Entering the park was a little confusing because the visitor center is being renovated and was closed. So, we had to drive down to where they have military housing to get any information. The temporary visitor center was packed, unfortunately there were a few tours stopping at the same time as us. So, we really didn't get much information there at all, just stopped for a minute, used the restroom, and then got back on the road. We followed the crater rim road to the lookout at the end so we could see Kilauea. The volcano wasn't doing much when we were there, just a lot of steam you could really smell the sulfur dioxide hey, it was almost too much. We walked around that area a little bit, getting different views and pictures of the volcano. We tehn headed over to an old crater and cinder cone formed by an active part of the caldera which has been dormant for the past 50 years. Here we hiked Devastation Trail through the cinder field by the cone. This was interesting as you can see the cone and also how vegetation is coming back to the area. We then we got back in our car and headed over to Chain of Craters Road, which ends where the latest lava flow rolled over it on the way to the sea. This road goes past several old craters (hence the name). It goes through miles of nothing but old lava. When we were there it was very misty/raining, which added to the atmosphere. I was reminded of Frodo and Sam going through the Desolation of Smaug. We stopped at several places along the way to see different views. The last place we stopped before the end of the road was the Holei Arch lookout. This is a great view of the very high vertical cliffs and a sea arch coming out from them. Eventually we came to gates closing off the road, but you could see that it continued for a while, so we decided to walk up the hill on the road to see where it ended. Once we walked about a mile to the top of the hill we were surrounded on both sides by new lava. However, the road just kept going as far as we could see. I'm guessing they blasted the lava flow and made room for the road.

After all this it was getting pretty late, so we drove back to the main part of the park by the old visitor center and went to volcano house. Volcano house is hotel you can stay at, and they also have a couple of restaurants. We ate at George's Lounge which has floor to ceiling windows overlooking the volcano crater really a cool view, we got some pretty nice sunset pictures out of this, unfortunately the food basically sucked. After dinner we headed back to the hotel with more winding roads in the dark, that seems to be our theme for this trip.