Awesome Kilauea

[glacier_kitty]

Today we took a tour to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. We went in a van with other people (13 in total). The guide picks you up at different hotels..one was the Mauna Lani! I stayed there last time with dad and LOVED it..it was nice to see it again. :D Mark was pretty knowledgeable about Hawaiian legends, plants, animals, etc. It's nice to have that extra touch. It takes a couple hours to get to the park..it's on the wet side of the island. It was interesting transitioning from sere hilly land to wet lush forest. When we went through the dry area Mark was telling about GLACIERS that used to be on the volcanoes around us!! WHAT..glaciers in HAWAII??! He even showed us a terminal moraine from one of the glaciers!! I never thought I'd see anything relating to glaciers here! He said when the glaciers melted all that silty dirt blew off the volcanoes and formed the mounds around us. AWESOME haha. It was rainy and chilly while we were there..I feel like it's like that everywhere besides our hotel..wth haha. We drove to the summit of Kilauea (4,190 feet) and looked down at the caldera, which was steaming! There's a lava lake there (you can't see it unless you were in a helicopter or something). Pretty cool. We also explored lava fields, went to these cliffs (it was super fun to watch the waves just smash up against them! You could feel it in your feet! You could also see steam in the distance from lava going into the ocean) and explored a lava tube..way cool! Lava looks so interesting. There was also a lovely forest with huge ferns and cool bird sounds. We ate dinner near Kilauea's summit (it was dark by now) and then went back up to the summit to see the glow from the lava! (Luckily the clouds weren't totally obscuring it) It was so cool..it was bright orange/red and you could see it pulsing as the lava rose and fell! Wow. Then it was time for the long dark drive back to our hotels..luckily I had a flashlight (Mark gave them to us for the walk to the summit) so I read on the way back. I'm glad to be back on the warm side of the island haha..or at least the sunny/warm window at the hotel. :P Now..bed!

Comments

[foxydanish.livejournal.com]

Aaah that sounds AWESOME! I saw some of your pictures on Facebook, but I have a feeling you will post them on LJ too, so I'll probably look at them more closely then ;) From what I saw everything looks BEAUTIFUL though! OMG... That's amazing that you even discovered stuff about glaciers there haha...how cool. That's good that your tour guide was so knowledgeable. You are so freaking lucky that you are in Hawaii hehe. YAY. :)

[heartlines.livejournal.com]

Glaciers seem to find you wherever you go ;)
(btw my family and I played a board game yesterday called "1000 places to go before you die" where you had to "travel" places and my mom had to go to Denali one time :) )