Eric spent a lot of time planning out our anniversary vacation for the past few months. However, thanks to the swine flu, Eric and Julie had to cancel their Cancun trip at the very last minute. Instead of getting excited about the Mayan pyramids, Eric got super exited about the "L-A-V-A" of the Big Island in Hawaii. He kept saying "can you imagine, we are going to step on earth that is younger than us... ^_^ I am going to take a stick and poke at it until it catches on fire"
The weather in Kona is definitely better than SF. It was in the comfortable 80s.
It took us 3 hours to drive out to the volcano...( Julie slept through all of it)... and found out that the volcano is PASSING GAS!!! The toxic sulfuric gas level was 2-4x higher then normal and half of the national park was shut down...
We did get a few good pictures in the area where the park was still open.
Here is Eric in a lava tube:
Then we drove another hour to a lava viewing area. The drive to the entrance was amazing.
You can see the steam coming off the ocean as the lava enters.
You can also see the steam coming off the lava as it moves down the mountain.
Before entering the viewing area, we were greeted by the official lava dog.
and here is an interesting formation of the lava...
There were quite a few people at the viewing area by the time we got there... but we weren't sure what we should expect because we were at least 1/2 mile away from the actual ocean entrance point of the lava. As the sun sets... we finally got it...
you see that little dot of orange... that was it...
We later found out from the park ranger that since there is no surface lava and the park has too much toxic gas, the area that you can see actual lava is closed.
Better luck next time!!
PS: did I mention... our hotel room was about 1/2 mile from the parking lot of the hotel... you have to walk through 3 different sets of hall ways to get half-way there:
