Twelve years ago my sister had to travel to Hawaii for business. Her boss in the architecture firm couldn’t make it and she went in his place to a conference. She fell in love with Hawaii and when we later talked she said we would have to go to Hawaii on our next sisters vacation.
With the recent television and online coverage of the Kilauea eruptions in Hawaii, it brought back my memories of seeing a lava flow.
Hawaii was not on my bucket list at all, but I like to travel so I flew to San Fran and we went on to Maui the next day. Maui looks like a big farm with all the pineapple groves. The only commercial part is the row of hotels on the coast. It’s a beautiful place — a paradise with lush foliage and flowers everywhere. The airports are small and they give you 10 minutes to run to and climb the rolling stairs and board the plane. They seem to be old retired planes — more like a big bus with wings.
Paula Nicewanger/Weekly View
Visitors watching the lava flow at dusk.
We flew to the Big Island of Hawaii next, which is really big with lime green grass covering its mountainous middle where herds of Black Angus cattle graze. We visited the Volcanos National Park to see if we could get an up close and personal look at lava. You park at the edge of the dried crusted lava flow and are required to take in water and a flash light. I thought “it’s the middle of the day, why do we need a flash light?” but later that night I was glad we had one. The park had instructions and restrictions for the hike over the lava flow. You had to be in good health, no heart or lung disease, had to stay on the trail which was marked with reflectors placed every 20 ft. or so, and no poking the lava with a stick or roasting marshmallows or disturbing it in any way. The park ranger said it would probably be an hour before we saw any lava. The walking surface was the cracked black cooled lava from earlier flows. It was like nothing I had ever walked on (like another planet). After about 45 min. we saw a little bit of smoldering black coals (it looked like someone had dumped their charcoal grill). A ranger who was passing said stay with this little flow and a second flow was just a few yards away. The ranger said it was going to develop and didn’t need to go farther. There was only one other family near us and they stayed too and their young son got out his marshmallows to roast (which was a no-no).
The lava expands and rises, cracks and then the hot red lava flows oh so very slowly from this little hot mound. We stayed for 5 hours! In that time the flow of each little lava stream was going downhill toward the sea and they connected and formed a big half circle and people gathered and set up tripods and took tons of pictures, including us. The lava streams started to close the circle and the ranger yelled for everyone to get out of the middle. Lava is in slow motion, but relentless and the air temp was probably 90 degrees. I don’t remember the air being too hard to breathe. As we stood around fascinated by mother nature, other hikers (estimate 100) joined us and I remember one lady was scared to death at the site and I assured her it was slow and predictable and not to worry — even though when I looked down through the crevices of the mound we were standing on, I could see the light from fire. It was way after dark when we finally decided to leave and we asked for others to join, which a few did and in the pitch dark with our flashlights, we followed the reflectors singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” to keep calm. Far off in the distance, we could see trails of red hot lava flowing down the mountain. The rangers said we were lucky to see such a flow. I hope and pray Kilauea calms down soon.
