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 ...

La Machine

These photos are from July 28.  As part of the Canada 150 celebrations in Ottawa this summer, some street performance art called "La Machine" came to town from France.  Long Ma, a Dragon-Horse, and Kumo, a giant spider, are huge mechanized creatures that wandered and duelled in downtown Ottawa over the course of 4 days.  The backstory is that Kumo has stolen Long Ma's wings, and they both roam the streets of downtown, with Long Ma battling Kumo at intervals to try to get them back.  We went down on the Friday to see them encounter each other for the first time.

Ed took these first two of Kumo at rest:

Here is Long Ma at rest over lunch, the battle was scheduled for 2 pm:

This shows the machinery that operates Long Ma:

The crowd was really big, but well behaved.  This is as close as we got for the battle part, there is a spider way off in the distance waving its giant legs:

Ed took these next few with his zoom lens.  You can see Kumo's orchestra that follows behind her on raised platforms:

The dragon is not happy, and exhales some smoke to prove it:

Kumo takes off after Long Ma to start roaming the streets again:

We hate crowds and were at our quota of standing around, so we took off in the other direction.  It was cool to see it though, and then to watch the videos on Youtube from people who had had closer encounters with them.

MosaiCanada 150

I kind of got derailed about posting about Hawaii, but I will get back to it!  In the meantime, here are some photos of the MosaiCanada topiary displays that are in Parc Jacques-Cartier this summer.

Ed got to learn about a lot of sterotypical Canadian iconography on this outing.  Here he is with the Mountie, representing Saskatchewan:

The lobster fisherman, Nova Scotia:

The muskoxen (my favourites!) represent the Northwest Territories, and the inukshuk is for the northern lights (which are pictured on the other side so you can't see them from this angle):

The drum dancer is for Nunavut, and the polar bear behind him is for Manitoba:

The dragons are for Beijing, I guess they get an honourable mention on Canada's 150th, so we can't be accused of being too parochial.

The voyageur:

Bison grazing:

And a couple of Mother Earth:

I really liked this event, it was my favourite of the Canada's 150th birthday celebrations.

December 5: Lava and things around Hilo

After all the rain, and with the forecast still threatening more, we decided we were ready for the nut house.  Macadamias, of course!

Here's the edge of the macadamia orchard:

After stocking up on nuts, we headed south to check out some lava trees, formations that occur when flowing lava runs up a tree and then the tree catches fire and burns out, leaving an upright tube of stone:

We then started meandering further south, without a real plan in mind but to see what there was to see along a couple of scenic roads:

We stopped at this park and had a look at the lava beach.  There were surfers but you can't see them in the photo.

Then we drove west ...

We came to this insanely beautiful spot along the road, stopped and took some photos, and I'll restrain myself and only post a couple:

Then we came to a spot near Kalapana where a lava flow back in 1990 formed a lot of new land on the coast:

In the upper left hand corner of the photo below you can see steam from where lava is currently flowing into the ocean, over near the National Park:

Some of the locals over the years have been planting coconut palms in the lava field near the coast, here are some of them growing:

On the drive back into Hilo, we stopped at the Zoo which was about to close for the day.  Here's one of the pathways:

This is as close as I got to any animals ...

Back in Hilo, we went for a walk and saw this huge cruise ship on its way back out to sea.

We walked over the bridge to Coconut Island in Hilo, here I am standing by a tree showing the height of some of the tsunamis over the years:

Just a picture of a restaurant across an inlet from our hotel as we went back in at dusk:

Coming up next, Volcanoes National Park ...