Saturday, April 5, 2008

Red Hot Lava

Later the first day, we had lunch, then went and checked into our cottage. Let me tell ya, it's not always warm and sunny in Hawaii...especially on the Big Island! Did you know that it actually snows in this part of the state??? Yep, on top of the mountains, it actually gets cold enough to snow. Anyway, travelling up the mountain to get to our cottage, it kept getting colder and colder. I was glad to see that there was a heater, even though it was of the propane variety.
After getting settled in, we decided that we could head down to an area where you can view the lava from Kilauea going into the ocean, enlarging the island little by little. We drove an hour and finally came to a road block where they give you a little ticket and tell you to keep driving over what had once been a road...now it's covered by lava that flowed over it in 1983. Surprisingly, people have moved back out there and have been building houses. Crazy, I tell ya!
We finally get to a parking area, get our camel backs on and start out on the half-mile hike over old lava to a look out point. Austin loved hiking. The only problem was that we got there too early and night fall was a couple of hours away. With the lookout being on the dried lava, we couldn't allow Austin to run around like he wanted. Hard lava can be very sharp and they have had pretty bad cuts from people falling or just trying to pry rocks up out of cracks and crevices.
So, we took pictures, marveled at the steamy view and then left to get dinner and a good night's rest.
Here are the pictures we got:






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