Talk about putting the cherry on top of the cake, these two last days on the Island of Hawaii were truly epic for us. We saw things that we never would of thought of seeing here but special thanks to Ed and Dot, they organized a most comprehensive itinerary. This morning again with the Uber we headed to the airport for the rental car for our two day rental. The plan was to first go south along the H130 to Chain of Crater road, this was great until we ran out of road which turned into something of a lava road, not gravel but ground lava. We soon realized that we were driving on aftermath of the 2018 huge volcanic explosion which decimated this area with some 700 homes disintegrating in the path of this lava outflow. We were in essence driving on top of, what had to be, 20 feet deep lava. We could see the tops of forest grove trees and the tops of palm trees and thought they looked odd when we realized that this was really just the tops of these trees for some reason were still green. Some owners had put numbers on the spot of there property while others had built simply shelters of their spots. The pictures do not do this experience justice but I have included some to give you an idea. We drive for a bit on this terrain before turning around and headed towards Volcano National Park. Another great experience as so much has changed since our last visit here almost 10 years ago. You could no longer enter the Jagger Museum at the top and end of crater road because of the damage from this 2018 eruption. The edge of the crater is now right at the museum making it an unstable structure. Fortunately the Thurston Lava tube is still in great shape but the hike we did back in 2014 is no longer possible, there are other hikes here but back then we walked on the crater floor much of which no longer exists. After visiting the lava tube we headed down to the waters edge to view the end of the lava flow as it entered the ocean, there is a beautiful sea arch that you can see. This was just an amazing day. We headed back to the ship and found a great spot to overnight park very close to the ship, we had two more volcanoes to view the next day…
Some pics of this adventure…hope you enjoy…
The tops of trees buried with at lest 20 feet of lava.
On our way to the Lava tree state park.
Lave tree state park from eruptions dating back to the 1800’s.
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