December 6: Volcanoes National Park

I'm in the midst of planning our next trip, which reminded me that I really have to finish blogging our last trip from last December!  It's been a busy year with several moves and new jobs, so it's not just laziness that has kept me from my blogging (although it probably is the main culprit).

The top thing on my list that I wanted to see in Hawaii was volcanoes.  Seeing the dormant one in Maui got weathered out, but we had a lot more time set aside to see the active one on Big Island, and to spend time in the National Park.

We started with the Kilauea Iki trail, which traverses a side crater of the Kilauea volcano.  Here we are looking down into the crater before descending into it from the forested rim:

I forget when the most recent volcanic event had happened here, but the cracks in the lava are still steaming.  It smells of sulphur:

Hiking across the crater, you can see other parties ahead of us:

Checking the temperature of one of the cracks (hot!)

Lava hills inside the crater:

Cracks in the lava hill:

It's a really interesting landscape, with the desert-like volcanic crater juxtaposed right against the tropical rainforest that surrounds it.

Looking back on the crater (most of which is in the far distance) as we hiked back up the other end of it:

From the trail heading back we got a glimpse of the steam from the active crater of the Kilauea volcano:

The trail back followed the forested rim of the crater:

After hiking this trail, we took a drive down one of the side roads towards the southern coast, and passed through some interesting landscape:

Coming up next, the active caldera of Kilauea ...