We have made a few trips to the Volcano State Park. and have been roasted at the steam vents, smelled toxic gas (wasn’t me), explored the lava tubes, walked across lakes of lava, stood at the rim of an active volcano, and yet, in the one place where we sure to see flowing lava, it has stopped. Dang it! It flows for 26 years straight until just before we come. Oh well, we would not have been able to get that close to it anyway.
We went through the lava tube (600ft, 100m) and then saw that there is a whole other section that you can go through if you bring your own lights. We couldn’t pass that up. The light from my phone didn’t get us far so we came back another time with lights. I already had a headlamp and bought one for Eric. The tube is much smaller, deeper, and scarier than the main tube which is fairly level and well lit. This tube goes down and down and requires a little effort to get around the big pieces of ceiling that have fallen in your way. Yes, a number of giant pieces of ceiling had fallen, way down deep in that soundless black void where no one would ever hear your screams for help as you were crushed by the merciless rock. Every step seemed to take you miles further away from the safety of the surface, the ceiling got lower, the darkness blacker, and the silence more deathly, until, after a 1100 ft (336m) of claustrophobic nightmare, the ceiling crashed into the floor and it was the end. And time for a snack! Cool.There is no better way to get an appreciation for how big a volcano is than to walk across its lake of lava (cooled of course). We hiked some trails and found our way to the caldera of Little Kilauea after seeing it from above. It didn’t look that big. It is. Really big.
We climbed all over the hardened broken surface of the lake, inside petrified bubbles, through enormous crevices, and over smooth flowing ripples. The whole time we worked hard not to scratch the heck out of ourselves because that stuff is really rough. I ended up with a few bleeding spots, nothing much, just enough to look manly.
