Hawaii Day 6

Today was all about volcanoes with some sea turtles, black sand, and petroglyphs thrown in for good measure. We got off to an extremely early start this morning - even for you go-getters, you have to admit 5:45a on a non-work day is pretty early - and headed off towards Volcanoes National Park 3+ hours away. Hard to believe anything on an island can be that far away, but it's the truth.

For breakfast we stopped at a McDonalds in Kona that was inhabited by several chickens and a small herd of feral cats. We thought we might be able to get our breakfast without even going inside, but decided we weren't up for the chase and went in to the counter like everyone else.



We had planned to check out the green sand beach on the south side of the island, but realized that it was a pretty big time commitment, so we settled for visiting the southernmost point of the United States instead - imaginatively named South Point. It actually turned out to be much cooler than either of us expected with the jagged rocks and crashing waves all around.

Everyone has heard about the black sand beaches in Hawaii and of course we wanted to sink our toes into one, so we headed down the road to Punaluu. The black sand was amazing and again we were surrounded by pounding surf. We got an unexpected bonus (no, not the 2 busloads of japanese tourists - no surprise there) when we all but tripped over three hawksbill turtles resting on the beach. One might think that all the people surrounding them was a give away that something was there, but whatever. All told there were 6-7 of them on different parts of the beach. We saw another one that was stuck on its back between some rocks. Luckily it was finally able to flip itself over with the help of a good samaritan and a few waves.

We finally got to Volcanoes National Park around 1p. After a quick stop at the visitor's center, we walked across the street and got our first view of the Halema`uma`u crater of Kiluaea. Maybe I'm just easily impressed, but I thought it was amazing. We drove up one side of Crater Rim Drive and got a few closer glimpses of the crater before having to turn back at Jagger museum because the road had been closed due to recent and ongoing eruptions - in this case it has been mostly toxic fumes.

We were able to drive up around the other side of the crater and then down Chain of Craters Road, which is exactly what it sounds like - a road that runs alongside crater after crater and cuts through several lava flows, most of them from the 70s. We stopped off at a few of the flows and walked through a long lava tube before making our way down to yet another flow/lava field with where we hiked about 3/4 of a miles to some petroglyphs left by ancient Hawaiians (or their devious descendants).

I think we both wish we had more time to spend in VNP, it seems like there is some good hiking and a lot of things to discover. Maybe next time we're in the neighborhood...