We had a great day today! We took off in our rental car with the goal to circle the island! We did circle the island - but ran out of daylignt before we ran out of sights to see! That's OK - we still saw lots of awesome stuff on our adventure!Our first stop was the black sand beach at Punalo'o. I took a pic of my feet on the black sand. It is formed by volcanic rock. Cool bonus - we came across this sea turtle sunning him/herself on the beach.
Our next stop was Volcano's National Park. We weren't able to see any of the lava flows - as the current flows are only accessible by air - and the crater rim road is closed due to sulfur fume levels. (Thus the Vog we've been experiencing - Volcano Fog). However, there were some points where we could walk and look over the crater rim (upwind of the fumes!) This is Kiluea Crater - and you can still see the steam vents venting steam. In addition to hiking a short trail along the rim - we hiked down to the Thurston Lava Tube. It was so cool to walk through the tunnel formed hundreds of years ago by lava! The stark contrasts at the volcano were stunning - the barrenness of the lava lake, the lushness of the rainforest! I took a pic of a very unusual fern that winds up and unwinds itself!
After the park - we headed to Hilo - and to Rainbow Falls... we had a little "incident" at the Falls.... apparantly my mom took it a little to literally! She tripped in the parking lot - fell, and gave herself a lovely shiner. It put a bit of a damper on the remainder of the sights for her.
After Rainbow Falls - we took some more coastal, and scenic drives through some of the rainforest.... and then stopped at Akaka Falls (that's the photo at left). They were incredible!!
Just before we lost all our daylight - we stopped at the Waipo Valley overlook - and looked down on another pristine black sand beach!
After all that driving (it was another 2 hours home in the dark after Waipo Valley) we just ordered a pizza into our room at the condo!
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