‘A‘a fresh? Hmm, that makes me think of something more like this:

(Image courtesy of the US Geological Survey)

No thanks, I think I’ll stick with the mild salsa on this one.

Edit: For the benefit of out-of-state readers, the sign’s for a restaurant called Baja Fresh.

Lava tubes are formed when smooth a’a lava flows through a channel, then crusts over. The still-molten lava underneath keeps flowing until the source stops, and it drains out, leaving a long tubelike cave.

We were lucky in that there were very few other tourists there at the time. (It was the first week of April, which isn’t exactly the height of Hawaii’s tourist season.) The Thurston tube is famous partly because of its size, and partly because it’s very easy to get to. It’s less than a quarter-mile walk from the road.

I decided to use ambient light as much as possible here. Unfortunately, I left my compact tripod in the car. It was already late in the afternoon, and I wanted to get to the coast while there was still light, or else I would have gone back to get it. So I braced the camera against the walls as well as I could, often getting diagonal photos—and of course getting ghost images of the other people walking through.

The trail runs through a long section of the tube, then out through a break in the side. The tube continues several hundred more feet, but it’s gated off with a sign warning you to bring a flashlight.

Now the lava tube itself isn’t the only amazing thing. Hawaii is full of microclimates. Remember what the caldera a few miles away looked like:

The Thurston tube is in an actual rain forest with giant ferns and everything!

Next: chain of craters and lava flowing into the sea.

Note: This visit to Kilauea was Thursday, April 7, 2005.

Kilauea is often referred to as the most active volcano in the world. To give you an idea why, its latest eruption started in 1983… and is still going!

We got to the park fairly late in the day, partly because we underestimated the amount of time it would take to drive there from Kailua, and partly because we stopped at various points of interest along the way. It was mid-afternoon by the time we got to the visitor’s center, where Katie stood transfixed by the lava videos and I checked out the maps.

We stopped for a late lunch at Volcano House, an old hotel built on the edge of the Kilauea Caldera. Check out the view! (The image links to a slightly larger copy.)

The crater Halema‘uma‘u, which contained a boiling lava lake from 1823–1924, is visible near the center. The southern slope of Mauna Loa rises in the background. The whole caldera is roughly elliptical in shape, and Volcano House is one end of the longer axis. I don’t remember exactly how far it is from one side to the other, but judging by the map I’d say it’s about 2×3 miles.

Off to the right, behind a tree in the panorama, are the steaming bluffs. Groundwater gets heated by the magma below the volcano and seeps out through cracks all over the caldera.

We drove around Crater Rim Drive—three guesses where that goes—and as it turns out our first stop was those steaming bluffs. Fortunately, the wind was blowing the steam away from the vents while we were there. It’s a 0.1-mile “hike” from the parking lot to the edge. There was a group of schoolchildren on a field trip there, and we could hear their guide telling them about the geology and about various Hawaiian folk tales relating to the area. You can also see Volcano House in the background.

There are actually vents scattered all around the area, and we got a chance to look at one up close, where you can see all the mosses and mineral deposits.

This part of the island is comparatively arid (and the “repaving” it gets every few decades can’t help much), but the moisture from these vents creates its own mini ecosystem. Compare this to the dry grass in the previous shot:

This next shot was taken from the same spot, looking across the crater at a lava dome. I think it’s Pu‘u Pua‘i.

Moving along, about a third of the way around the rim are the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and the Jaggar Museum. We didn’t have time to stop in, but we did stop for the view of Halema‘uma‘u, which is much clearer from here.

We also got a view of one of the many instruments used to measure seismic activity in the area. Because Kilauea is both extremely active and comparatively safe, it’s being monitored constantly.

As you drive around the larger crater, you start seeing signs by the side of the road that say things like “1971 Lava Flow” or “1982 Lava Flow.”

At the opposite end of the crater from Volcano House, there’s a trail head for a short hike out to the Halema‘uma‘u Overlook. (Actually, the trail crosses the entire larger crater.) This area is riddled with steam vents and warnings about hazardous fumes. I couldn’t help but think of Boromir saying, “The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume.” It was around this point that Katie started staying in the car while I went out to explore.

The overlook takes you right up to the edge of the 3400-foot Halema‘uma‘u Crater. From that close a wide-angle lens can’t capture the whole thing, but the floor of the crater looked rather inhospitable, full of cracked, smoking lava.

From the museum I had spotted what looked like yellow patches on the side of the crater wall. I wondered if they were sulfur deposits. From the overlook I could see that they were…and they were still steaming.

This is near the road on the south rim, east of Halema‘uma‘u and probably in the 1982 lava field. What struck me the most was the red rock. It’s hard to see in this picture, but it’s a deep red, and not the color I’m used to seeing in rock colored by rust.

Just outside the main Kilauea crater is a smaller crater called Keanakako‘i. This apparently used to be the site of an adz quarry. You can see more of that really red rock at the right edge, near the base.

Across the road is a short loop trail to some lava fissures that erupted in (IIRC) 1974. Try to imagine sheets of lava launching up like curtains.

Yet while most of the recent decades’ lava has yet to break down enough for plants to take hold, these fissures are collecting just enough dirt. This one was full of ferns.

Next: lava tubes and rain forests, then more craters, danger signs the sea… and an active lava flow.

Note: This visit to Kilauea was Thursday, April 7, 2005.

We drove past a beautifully drawn whale several times before we finally decided to stop by the side of the road, and Katie stepped out to get a picture:

Then there was this one, which looks like it was actually spray paint instead of coral, but we couldn’t figure out whether it was supposed to be a missile, a cross, a tombstone, or, well, a phallus.

Back to initials in trees, we spotted an odd tree which seemed to have every single leaf covered with names.

At first we couldn’t believe people would do this to every single leaf, but we later discovered it’s actually called an autograph tree.

Note: These photos were taken throughout the week of April 4-10, 2005

That’s not dirt, that’s rock! You may be wondering about the white bits. They’re a sort of temporary graffiti. All through this area, people have dragged out bits of coral to spell out messages ranging from “Hi Mom” and “Aloha Dolly” to “In Memory Of…” For some reason it’s almost universally good-natured. Katie’s got some interesting pictures. that we’ll be posting later.

Here’s a view of the coast itself. Our guide on the Mauna Kea tour told us what was in that stand of palms, but I can’t remember:

(This is also the area where you’ll see the Donkey Crossing signs.)

Here’s another picture that shows a pahoehoe flow (a‘a comes out cooler and chunkier, leaving behind jagged rocks, while pahoehoe is hotter and more liquid, so it flows smoothly and often cools with ripples still visible).

Because of the rain shadow, this side of the island gets a lot more sun, so people have been building resorts along the coast. One of the biggest, Waikoloa, has its own shopping center with its own Macy’s. It was also where our catamaran cruise launched, so we visited their beach. This is probably more what you were expecting from Hawaii:

It was very windy that day. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are roughly straight north-south from each other, so the trade winds just go up and over the saddle in between and hit, well, Waikoloa. And with so few trees in the lava flows, there’s not much to slow them down.

We were very familiar with this stretch of road by the end of the week. Our first trip along it also brought us our first view (from the ground, anyway) of Mauna Kea:

You can actually see some of the observatories up on the peak:

Continuing north you come to the Kohala peninsula and mountain. The oldest of the island’s volcanoes, depending on who you talk to it’s either extinct or very, very dormant. (It’s been thousands of years.) It’s the only area we saw that showed more signs of erosion than vulcanism. Like the island as a whole, it has a wet side and a dry side. The highway runs up along the west side of the ridge to the tip, then along the west coast back to the main part of the island. A lot of the land is current or former ranch land, and you see cows all over the place. The east side doesn’t have a highway, and as near as we can tell is mostly undeveloped. The closest we got was the lookout above Waipio Valley on the east coast. (I’ll also explain why we didn’t get any closer than the lookout!)

These next few pictures are from a turnout up along the ridge of Kohala, looking south toward the coast and the bay.

Oh, yes, about that rain shadow? It explains why Hawaii puts rainbows on its license plates. With full-on rain right next to clear skies, rainbows are incredibly common. Here in southern California we hardly ever see rainbows. I don’t think a day passed in Hawaii that we didn’t see one!

Oh, yeah, rental car trivia: Because Hertz was backed up so badly (Four flights arrived at once, and even spread across several rental agencies, it kept us in line for about an hour), they handed us the first car they had available instead of waiting to get the economy car I’d reserved. They gave us a Buick LeSabre. While it has a lot of nice features, it tries too hard to be a “smart” car. If it can be done automatically, it’ll do it. Light sensors trigger the headlights, moisture sensors trigger the windshield wipers, the air conditioning and heater are handled thermostat-style. If you want to do things on your own terms, you can’t. Definitely not the right car for a Linux user.

One last photo for today. Our first time up this coast we noticed some rather sharply defined dark cloud banks, one out to sea and one across the bay. As we drove north, one of them resolved into the mountain of Kohala, which left us wondering whether the other one might be the next island over. It turns out that yes, you can see Maui from here. Between clouds and haze we never got a clear view, but we at least managed to get a better view than that first day:

Note: Most of these photos were taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2005. A few were earlier or later in that week.