B&B owner Joan was a grandmotherly Donald Trump. She kindly served a good filling breakfast of fruits and pancakes, while telling stories of her history, the neighbors, and the eight local vacation rental homes she owned with the B&B. Having been there for 24 years, she accumulated properties over time and had made a going business of it, riding the rises and falls of tourist dollars and relying on a large number of repeat guests.
Nearby Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park was a great place to visit and explore. Geology visibly ranged from events 7 million years ago to events happening in front of us that day. An enthusiastic pony-tailed ranger greeted us at the Kilauea Visitor Center, eagerly answering questions that he had likely answered hundreds of times before yet he still delivered with a focused sparkle in his eye.
The Jaggar Museum provided informative exhibits and a panoramic view from the rim down into Kilauea Caldera. Steam and sulfur vents rose across the solidified expanse of lava bottom, viewed through foggy mists that would clear occasionally for special clarity.
Short hikes provided views into some of the current slow but ongoing geological activity.
Steaming Bluff (Akanikolea) was a cliff edge side of the caldera, where rain water percolated down and then emanated back up through the ground as steam after being heated by the volcanic forces below. Sulfur Banks (Ha’akulamanu) wound around whitish rock mounds where noxious sulfur gasses rose into the atmosphere, creating delicate bright yellow crystals from gasses and compounds mixed at the surface.
Steam rising out of the ground at Akanikolea / Steaming Bluffs
My favorite in the park, Kilauea Iki Trail, wound for 4 miles halfway around the Kilauea Iki Crater rim and dropped down to the solidified crater’s bottom for a hike back across and up the other side. Kilauea Iki had been active on many occasions, most recently in 1959 when it blew for 36 days and climaxed in a fountain that reached 1900 feet into the air as steady molten rock sprayed skyward (the largest such height on record).
From the rim of Kilauea Iki, hiking out to the far opening and down across the crater bottom
The rim portion of the trail showed hurled spatter and geology on a big scale, with great views of the large Pu’u Pua’i cinder cone that was formed by the cascading remnants of the 1959 geysers. Walking across the crater bottom showed how the eruptions created what amounted to a lava lake. After each eruption of the lava fountain, the cooling rock in the molten lake would temporarily whirlpool back down into the incredibly hot hole, only to come back soon again. A 50 foot tall “bathtub ring” could be seen while walking around inside, showing the jagged edge of the last bubbling lava lake before it finally subsided for who knows how long. The lava lake apparently even had waves lapping against the shore, and even broke off solid rock that floated around like icebergs. The crater vent still steamed from the hot, but cooling, interior below. The crater’s bottom had a wavy, undulating appearance of cracked lava rock plates that spanned from side to side.
Bottom of the Kilauea Iki crater by the Pu’u Pau’i cinder cone
By taking a detour from the Kilauea Iki Trail, we also explored the Thurston Lava Tube. Ranging in height from 8 to 20 feet high, the first 300 feet were illuminated by electric lights, while the few who came prepared with headlamps (such as us) went behind a gate and explored the dark recesses another thousand feet into the mountain.
Inside the initial lit portion of the Thurston Lava Tube
To top the day off, we drove down Chain of Craters Road across the lava flows of centuries past, peering over edges into smaller craters, passing through vog (volcanic smog), and looking out to vistas across lava to the ocean beyond. The road gradually dropped 3700 feet to the shore at a rocky coastline with several sea arches and a view of the steam plume we had seen from the other side the night before.
Pacific coast at the end of Chain of Craters Road