Volcanoes

On Monday we took off for a 2.5 hour ride down to the Volcanoes National Park.  Here, in Kilauea caldera, Pele is slumbering after being awake from March 5 through 9 of this year.  There was an eruption and lava flow for 4 days and nights.  Missed the action again!  Anyway, we took our friends, Tom and Debbie to the volcano since they had never seen one.  From this picture you can see that the crater is still smoking and the flume is filling up with lava for the next flow.   

Next we took them down the Crater road which went through a lot of lava fields dating from the mid 1800's.  You will notice in this picture a black line that runs right to left.  That is a line of lava that ran from Kilauea to the ocean.  Sometimes you have to take a close look because it can look like a shadow, but this line is lava.

At the bottom of the Crater road there is a road block that you can't cross with a car because this is what you will encounter.  In the 1970's an eruption caused the lava flow to come across the road the block this area forever.  It runs about 2 miles wide, but if you want to take a long walk you can actually get up close and personal to the lava flow.  We didn't take the walk this time but about 8 years ago I did walk it, at night, and took some great up close pictures of molten rock.  If you notice the lava formation you will see that the lave looks smooth and polished - that is called a'a lava.  The picture above is pahoehoe lava and it looks like small air filled rocks.  The difference of the two is that a'a is like dark chocolate that is melting and moves very slowly and the pahoehoe is the stuff that is thrown out of the volcano and lands with a splat.  When you see a video of a volcano and you see stuff being thrown up in the air, that is pahoehoe lava.  Notice the sign for the uninformed.  Will that area be opened?  Probably not in my lifetime because the volcano is still active.

After our trip to the volcano we continued on to the town of Hilo on the east side of the island.  Hilo is a rather small town that is almost always in a rain state.  Each time I have been there it rained.  Now here is the part that will tickle your funny bone.  It was getting close to 2:30 and we hadn't eaten since breakfast and were getting hungry.  Normally we like to eat things that are unique to the area we are in - in other words we don't like to eat at chain restaurants, but as we were talking we all agreed that Taco Bell sounded really good this time.  So Tom, who was driving, put Taco Bell in his GPS and found that it was about 8 miles from our present position.  Sounded good- off we go.  After circling around a residential area for about 10 minutes the GPS announced that we had arrived.  We were in an intersection in the residential area with only houses all around!  Okay, so we started again thinking that the GPS took our previous position in Kona.  Put in Taco Bell again and it announces that we are now about 1 mile from our destination.  Off we go.  Nope - still residential.  Debbie and I are in the back laughing out heads off.  Then we remember that both of us has a GPS on our phones.   We whip out the phones and input Taco Bell - Debbie gets a hit about 2 miles away and I get one that is permanently closed!  Tom's GPS finds another one about 2 miles away, but is taking us right back to where we were first sent.  Following Debbie's phone we FINALLY get to the Taco Bell.  Where was it?  About 5 blocks from where we got off the main road to follow the first direction!  Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and men.