56 miles in our F-150 pickup truck
Home: Nāmakanipaio Campground

Back when we thought we’d be rounding the south end of the Big Island on our bicycles, the idea was for us to just move 10 miles up the ring road and camp at Whittington Beach Park. That short day would give us the opportunity to do an 18-mile in-and-out offshoot to the southernmost tip of the island. And then the next day would be 28-mile ride up a 4000-foot climb to Volcanoes National Park.

Well, yesterday’s day of laying in bed (during which we could have easily done the offshoot, except that it would have interrupted our laying in bed) sucked a day out of our schedule. Luckily, in a motor vehicle, we could do the offshoot exploration and the climb to Volcanoes in one day, with plenty of time to spare to even see a bit of the park, putting us ahead of our plan. Hmm, maybe traveling at faster-than-bicycle-speed has some benefits too?

There had been multiple attractions to the offshoot to South Point. For Rett, the opportunity to cliff-dive into the ocean was a nerve-wracking draw, so I was secretly glad that our injuries, our newfound respect for the ocean, and the high-surf warnings all piled on top of each other to make “should I jump?” not even be a glimmer of a question this day.

My nerd’s interest in geographical extremes was a somewhat safer draw. We could walk down the not-quite-a-road to the southernmost point in the United States, nearly 400 miles further south than Key West. The meeting of waters at this point, combined with the unusually high surf conditions, also produced some of the most-dramatic waves I’ve ever seen. Diving in on a day like this would be utter insanity, and we thankfully saw no evidence of insane people even considering a leap.

I saw some big black balls floating a quarter-mile offshore, and later learned (from Bob) that they were inflated garbage bags used for a unique style of fishing in the area. The bags are effectively a sail used to tow the fisherman’s line into deep water, enabling them to go “deep sea fishing” while remaining solidly atop the cliff (apparently using drones for the same purpose has been outlawed, despite perhaps being more environmentally-friendly). The strong easterly winds that enable trashbag fishing also blew sand into our eyes, and made it a challenge just to open the car doors. So although the 1500-foot climb back up out of South Point wouldn’t have been too bad on our bikes, doing it with that strong crosswind would have sucked!

But the truck made it easy to do not just that climb, but immediately continue to the next, 4000-foot climb up to Volcanoes National Park (my shin muscle is already being built back up, so pushing down the gas pedal no longer hurts!) We went directly to the Park’s Nāmakanipaio Campground, which sits well outside of the entry station. It’s first-come/first-served, and while the truck got us there quite early in the afternoon, even by night there were plenty of sites open, so it would have been no problem on this Saturday night even if it had taken all day to get here on our bikes. We then had to drive over to the National Park lodge to pay (or we could have self-paid with cash at the campground), but while there, decided to watch the Visitor Center’s movie to learn a bit about the history and geology of this place.

We’d save the “real” park for the next couple days, but since we had the truck, it was so easy to shoot off on the way back to camp and do a short pleasant hike through more-native species on the Kipuka Puaulu trail, and then do an offshoot to the offshoot to the Lava Tree Molds. Despite the name confusing me, these were my favorite thing, natural stone “wells” constructed Rube-Goldberg style: simply plant a tree, let it grow to maturity, wait for a volcanic eruption to send a several-foot-thick layer of lava flowing around your trees, and then hold your breath and hope that your tree has the right water content, and the lava is the right temperature, so that by the time the tree finally succumbs to the heat and burns, the lava has already solidified, leaving behind a perfect tree-shaped hole in the new ground. Obvious!