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Monday, July 9, 2007
Visit to the volcano
» Posted by Jon at 11:38 pm :: Comments (0)
We were waiting to see the steam plume, a sign that lava from tubes is crashing into the sea, creating new land. (That may not be happening any more. For volcano updates, check out The Advertiser's special section.)
Anyway, here's six more to give you an idea of what you'll find in the youngest place on earth.
This is the crater of the Kilauea caldera, where Mark Twain saw a lake of lava when he visited. (On assignment for the Sacramento Union, the 31-year-old Clemens wrote 25 letters from the Sandwich Islands. There's books and travel guides based on them. Like this NYTimes story, which the OCRegister ran a few months later, which is kind of amusing.)
Anyway, this is where you pretty start your trip, driving around this thing on Caldera Rim Drive. You can hike into it if you want to, but leave plenty of time and take plenty of water.
This is the kind of rock formation you see all over the place. And some of it is shiny.
This is the Thurston Lava Tube, from a little hike into a mini rain forest..
The thing to note about this next picture is not the lovely rainbow in the center or the pile of lava. In the bottom right hand corner, you'll notice that the lava is covering the road. Which pretty much sums up the Big Island. From time to time, nature reasserts itself.
And the end of the road, there's a temporary ranger station and a makeshift parking area, so people can walk out on the lava rock to the cliffs over the ocean and watch the steam.
I just liked this shot of erosion in action.
» Filed under: Hawaii, Photolog
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