With only one pre-booked tour, we got to wake up without an alarm on both Tuesday and Thursday. All I had planned for Tuesday was making our way over to Volcanoes National Park so we spent a little time finding a local place for breakfast. I had brought some oatmeal with me but decided not to make use of it in favor of getting some deliciousness with our coffee. I did not bring coffee with me for obvious reasons since we stayed in Kona.
We found a place with good reviews and in walking distance so we headed over to pick it up and bring back to eat on the screened in porch of our airbnb.
The shop, Kona Coffee and Tea, grows, roasts, and serves their own beans.
The shop had a beautiful aesthetic which I would have loved to hang out in, as well as a beautiful design on their coffee packaging. I bought some for myself, for Mom and Ellis, and some for Bethany, all before even tasting it. Thankfully, it ended up tasting amazing, so good that I almost considered buying some online once I brewed all of that package I bought.
For breakfast, we both got oatmeal, ironic considering the fact that I brought some with me. However, you cannot beat freshly made oatmeal with fresh blueberries and bananas. I also got an acai bowl because I could not decide. I loved both of them.
As we walked back, towards Ali’i Drive, I saw a road sign with a few locations listed on it along with the distance to get there. When I saw “Volcanoes” next to “96” I wondered if I had underestimated the size of the Big Island. A quick google search confirmed that I lack the ability to accurately judge map scale. We had a two hour drive to the Park entrance. Good thing we did not have anything else on the plan for the day. I used the rest of the walk back to figure out the time we needed to leave by, 9, which still gave us plenty of time to leisurely enjoy our breakfast and coffee.
Whenever we have driving involved on a trip, Mom always drives and I always let her usually getting some cross stitching in. On this trip, however, I did not do much because I could not stop staring at the gorgeous scenery around us as we drove.
Words cannot do it justice so I will put in plenty of pictures.
Unfortunately, about half an hour outside of the park, raindrops started to obscure the view. I hoped that it would completely let up but it simply cycled unpredictably through various drizzles and overcast levels. Once at the park, we exited the car to discover that we had woefully underprepared for the cooler temps that higher elevation brings; I had managed to bring my umbrella though.
Before entering the visitor’s center, we got in line for the restroom only to discover that we had entered the line to speak with one of the rangers.
Whoops. once we sorted that out, we waited a little while to enter the small visitor’s center.
They did not have much in the way of souvenirs but when I asked the cashier about keychains she directed us over to the Volcano House which had a much larger selection, and a restaurant where we ended up getting lunch instead of heading back into “town.” Both Mom and I get new tops, short sleeve for me (which I currently wear as I write this entry) and a long sleeve for Mom which helped tremendously.
While shopping for these souvenirs, we kept hearing what we thought was thunder but turned out to be chairs scraping across the floor as people got up from their tables over at the restaurant. After seeing that you could look out over a vista of one of the craters, even though the drizzly clouds obscured some of the view, we chose to eat there, splitting a delicious flatbread pizza with pulled pork, pineapple, and Thai chili sauce.
While eating, we studied the park map to decide what we wanted to see. We stopped first at the steam vents, basically holes in the ground through which steam, heated by the magma below the ground, rose all across the landscape.
A couple of them had a parking lot nearby and fencing around each vent. Sadly, when I looked in, I saw plenty of assorted change on the rocks, thrown by people mistaking the vents for shopping mall fountains.
After the quick stop, we drove to the end of the crater rim road where we exited the car and took a short hike to yet another spectacular view. We planned to stop next at the lava tubes but for reasons we never discovered, the trail to access them was closed.
We kept walking on the trail, past the lava tube turnoff with periodic breaks in the vegetation on our right giving us access to glimpses of the magnificent caldera.
Occasionally, we could see tiny moving dots on what looked like a trail meandering across the caldera. Immediately, I knew that wanted to get to that trail.
The rain had created some muddy puddles and since neither of us cared to trek through that, we turned around and headed to Devastation Trail, already on our list and helpfully looking like it connected with that rail across the caldera.
Devastation Trail traverses an area covered by a massive eruption in 1959. The Crater Rim Road once came through this way. Just over 60 years later, the landscape shows the remarkable resilience of nature. Mom and I marveled at the landscape full of gravelly rocks with brightly colored flowers bursting forth scattered throughout.
Once again, words fail to contain the stunning beauty which not even drizzles and wind could take away.
Upon arriving at the base of our initial descent, the landscape transformed into what can be described as tropical rainforest-like. This stunning transformation took our breath away.
Then we took a turn at a trail junction which brought us ever closer to the caldera, down a series of steps carved out of hardened lava which led to the once beating heart of the volcano.
At this point, we did not follow a path but rather ranger created cairns to pick our way through.
Although crossing the caldera if we had had the time, and better footwear, would have bene awesome, I settled for getting far enough in that I could throw my arms out wide and loudly declare, “I’m standing in a volcano!”
Thankfully, climbing back out proved much easier. The rain picked up a bit on the return journey on the trail, making our decision to save the rest of the park to a hypothetical future trip, the right one.
We listened to podcasts on the cloudy, rainy drive back on a successful first day in Hawaii. Once we got back to the airbnb, I got in a mile to keep up my run streak before going with Mom over to Safeway to pick up some food and head to bed.
We had an early morning the next day so we could catch our flight to Oahu.