(more and higher resolution photos here)

For those who don’t live in Los Angeles, you should know that despite the smog we often do have breathtaking sunsets.  Often these occur on the way home from work (if you get to leave while the sun is still out) and there’s nothing to be done about it.  On the week before we left for our vacation I saw one of these forming and I rushed up the stairs to try to catch it properly, but these are all I managed:

Days later we went to Hawaii, expecting similar or better sunsets.

In order to get cheap flights to Hawaii (otherwise we wouldn’t have gone) we had to fly out on a Monday afternoon.  As it turns out the flights are also cheap because A) the planes seem 40 years old and B) there is nothing provided without an extra charge, even water.   Still, it wasn’t that bad as we had movies to watch on my tablet (the only time I ever use that thing is when I’m travelling).  The ride is roughly the same amount of time as flying to Ohio or New York, so watch two movies, relax a bit and you’re there.

When we arrived in Hilo we went straight to Enterprise, but they were about to close and were out of economy cars.  Not to worry, though, we were offered a free upgrade to a red convertible Camaro.  After picking up some food we went straight to Uncle Billy’s and checked out our room.

 The room was “low rent” but for the price that was expected.  What wasn’t expected was the “rainforest” immediately outside our room that had all kinds of chirping and yelping animals (mostly frogs and birds) chattering all night long.  If you could get past the audio stimulation you still couldn’t sleep due to the visual stimulation.  For some reason the hotel decided to string along bright orange lights along the top of our floor.  It probably looked nice to the folks in the lobby or to the twin building across the fake rain forest, but to us it looked like this:

and just like in Kramer’s apartment, it was that orange when the translucent white shades were drawn.

On our first full day in Hilo we found ourselves up earlier than expected (5am) since we couldn’t sleep on the set of Seinfeld’s 142nd episode.  Of course Hawaii time being two hours behind Los Angeles might have had something to do with it as well.  We decided to maximize our time and head to Volcano National Park.  We ate breakfast at the hotel, but their “international” breakfast consisted of bagels (or toast) and papaya. And nothing else.  But we ate a lot of bread and crossed our fingers.  Just around the bend from the hotel we came to Reeds Bay where we tried to watch the sunrise.

We headed from there into Volcano National Park.  Before seeing the sights we decided to leave the park for a bit and eat breakfast at Kiluea Lodge.  The food was okay, but the wait staff was slow and for some reason slightly annoyed with us. Maybe they thought because our age was less than half of the rest of their guests we’d be tipping in the same ratio; sounds like a self fulfilling prophecy.

Since we were already out of the park we decided to go up the road and go up to the Mauna Loa lookout.  The road is only ten miles long, but it takes you over an hour because it’s very rocky and only one lane for most of the way.  There’s a bit of stopping for wildlife as well with a lot of chickens about, turns out there are a lot of chickens about all over Hawaii.

 The actual lookout isn’t much, it’s really just a trailhead for the real trip to the peak, which you can only hike to and takes several days.  The only interesting thing is looking out from there and seeing the VOG boil up from the crater of Kiluea.

We elected to go back down, stopping at some of the more interesting spots on the way back to the main highway.

 

Afterwards we drove down to the little string of restaurants to get some gas (Camaros are terrible on gas, as it turns out) and pick up some food to eat on the road late.  We decided to get coffee drinks, snacks and two sub sandwiches at the Kilauea General Store.  The subs we would devour that day, but the large chips and popcorn bags we’d take another week and a half to finish.   We then went into Volcano National Park and headed northwest along crater drive, stopping at the steam vents and overlooks.

 Then we continued up to the Jagger Museum to see the crater again.

 

From there we circled back to the sulfur steam vents by the park visitors center.

 After walking through the sulfer vents we ate our sub sandwiches.  They actually turned out to be really well done subs with fantastic fresh baked bread and lots of vegetables.  There were many times on the rest of the trip where we wished we could go get those subs again.

We decided to drive the SouthEast road down to the coast next, stopping at the pits and craters.

We also stopped at Thurston Lava Tube.

 

Next up was a short hike out to Devastation Trail.

 

Further on down the road, which is called Chain of Craters,  to the ocean we came to lava flow after lava flow, each one a spectacular photo opportunity that I could have stayed at all day.

The first place was a short hike out to a rift that was surrounded by a field of sparkly multi-colored magma chutes.

 

On down the road were “fields” of smooth magma that surrounded the road for miles with only a blacktop road cutting through and Mauna Loa in the background.

Finally before sunset we reached the literal end of the road, where in 2003 a new lava flow had covered the road that zips up around the southern coast.  You can’t drive all the way out there, you have to park at the Holei Arch and walk the remaining half a mile or so.

 

The flow is miles and miles wide and miles and miles long, literally covering a percentage of the entire island and before too long we were out there alone.

 

Well, not alone, we saw a flock of nenes.

 

And even a few whales.

 

When we were driving back and eating at the Thai restaurant outside the park I got a voicemail from one of the tour operators letting us know our manta ray dive we’d planned on Friday was being cancelled.  We actually welcomed the news as it meant we had an excuse to leave Uncle Billy’s a day early.  Since our reservations in Kona (the west side of the big island) were actually at the Uncle Billy’s over there, it was a simple operation to swap a day on one side for the other.

Before heading back for another night with the orange lights, we decided to stare at some other orange lights, a little fainter.  Since the only currently active flow on the island was only accessible by helicopter (which we couldn’t afford) we decided to go back to the Jagger museum at night to get as close to “seeing” magma as we could.