Day 2

Today we would do wheeled exploration of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, via Crater Rim Drive, and Chain of Craters Road. Ironically, the “Drive”, much shorter than the “Road”, would actually have been more-suited to the bikes than the truck (the “stop every quarter-mile” nature of the lookouts are the exact sort of things bikes excel at), but the “Road”, descending 4000 feet back down to the ocean over 18 miles, is something that we never would have been able to do if we hadn’t been forced into the truck.

The giant crater of Kilauea is visible from everywhere along the Rim Drive, but is basically inaccessible. So it’s unexpected (but convenient) that there are a bunch of steaming thermal features way up on the flat rim at the edge of the giant hole to prove that the volcano is alive. It’s no Yellowstone (or even Rotorua, New Zealand), but it’s fun to add more Thin-Spots-in-the-Earth to our collection.

After finishing the out-and-back of the Rim Drive, we made a no-stops drive to the end of Chain of Craters Road, with the intention to make stops on the way back up after getting an overview of the whole thing. We reached the parking area at the end, and started to walk down to a viewpoint of the Holei Sea Arch. Strangely, we weren’t on any sort of trail, it was just a continuation of the road (but blocked by vehicle barriers), and it seemed to continue far beyond the viewpoint. Later we learned that this was a road that connects to the coastal towns at the southeast corner of the island, built as an evacuation route that residents could take west and up through the Park if lava flows cut off their main road to the east that connects them to Hilo. However, lava flows in 2016-17 took out the evacuation route instead! The National Park website, with significant understatement, reports that “opened in 1965, the road has been blocked by lava for 41 of its 53-year-existence.”

More recently, there was an eruption less than two weeks before we arrived, opening the tantalizing possibility that we would be able to see red flowing/erupting lava (which hadn’t happened in nearly a year here), but also triggering the fear that the park could be closed (or overwhelmed by lava-seeking visitors) before we even got there (it turned out the eruption only lasted 9 hours). [And, a month after we left, this very road we drove down was closed because earthquakes had opened cracks in it!] People in the Pacific Northwest live under constant threat of volcanic eruption, but few have ever experienced any real activity. Here, the volcano is very much alive and fucking shit up regularly!

But at the Holei Sea Arch, it was the ocean that was doing the fucking-up, with the still-high surf slamming into the cliff-walls of old lava flows and reminding fire and earth which element is the boss over the long-term.

Next stop was a fun hike across the super-sticky lava rock (the easiest angled surface in the world to walk on) to see the Pu‘uloa Petroglyphs. I came away not very impressed with the archeological understanding of the carvings; the earliest documentation (from 1823) understands them as essentially graffiti, or “I was here” markings (which makes the most sense to me). Later interpretation/use was for burying umbilical cords…? I also got the feeling that some of the markings were quite modern (which hey, go right ahead, we left plenty of our own evidence of passage across this easily-eroded stone too!) The goofiest thing was a sign that tried to convince me that native Hawaiians lived on this barren inhospitable field of lava, and built little shelters of rock to gather soil and water in which to grow a single sweet potato. Really? We just watched a movie in the Visitor’s Center about the bold Polynesian explorers who settled these islands after crossing thousands of miles of ocean, and now you’re telling me that their descendants were such immobile idiots that they didn’t think to walk 10 miles up the hill to places where water was plentiful and plants grow freely?! C’mon.

The next stop wasn’t marked in any way (and I can find very little written about it), but it’s an area where the lava, which is mostly a dull black, took on a shiny bronze sheen! We parked and reveled more in all the huge variety of shapes and patterns and textures that lava can evolve into. Like icebergs on a glacial lake, or the thermal features at Yellowstone, the variety within the class is far wider than and stranger than you’d ever imagine.

We stopped at several minor craters on the way to the top, which also held a lot of variety (some completely filled in with jungle, some barren), and while they were interesting, apparently none were terribly photogenic.

Then it was on to the “Devastation Trail”, through which I was singing Savatage’s “Devastation” the whole time. We made a loop that gave us views of both the main crater and the Iki crater (which we will hike through tomorrow), and a cool mix of life amid the devastation.

Thoroughly worn out, despite having a vehicle to carry us most of the miles, we returned to camp for dinner. But afterwards with the remains of my Goose Island beer in my hand, I took a peek up what Rett had seen as a trail leaving the campground, and accidentally kept going for nearly a mile. The trail was completely-unlabeled, and I had no idea where it went to, but it was beautiful, and seemed to go on forever, maybe all the way to the top of Mauna Loa? I finally turned around and took a flower back to Rett, convincing her and her aching body to at least come partway back with me to watch the sunset over the big volcano.