Day Four, The Volcano and The Big Island

Yeah, I know. I'm supposed to write about Thanksgiving. But I sorta got behind in writing about Hawaii, so I'm gonna keep on going with it. Thanksgiving was really nice, tho, and I'll get to that post later.








So let me just say wow. Awesome is way over used, but this would be the appropriate time to use it. Awe-some. Like "in awe". But I'm getting ahead of myself. Since we had already proved ourselves useless in using Hawaii's public transportation, we had shuttle tickets to get us to the airport. Ya know, a vacation from our vacation. And the stinkin' shuttle wanted to pick us up 3 HOURS in advance. That is NOT holoholo. But it was OK. We arrived in plenty of time to catch an earlier flight, and we even asked two or three different agents, but it seemed that they all wanted 50 extra bucks in order to make that happen. Eh, we decided to wait. Hawaiian Airlines trains their employees well. Upon our arrival at the Hilo Airport on the Big Island, we went straight away to the car rental counter where our mustang convertible waited. Yup, that's right. Convertible. Since I thought we were only going to rent a car for 1 day, I thought a convertible was the way to go. And it was. It was so fun to cruise around with the top down! And Hubby had quite a time racing through the curvy coastline. I think I did have to remind him a time or two that we didn't want to leave our children as orphans.

OK, so we arrived at the park, which is a part of the US National Park system and started cruising. You could spend a week there checking it all out, camping, and hiking and such, but since we only had 1 afternoon, we took the driving tour (oh, yeah, and did I mention our cool wheels?). The park rangers said, "oh, so you probably all want to see flowing lava, huh? Uh huh. Well, there isn't any in the park right now." Thanks, mister park ranger. But there was some somewhere else on the island if we wanted to make the drive. We didn't have the time to do that, but we got to see a lot of other cool stuff.

Looking at our pictures it doesn't nearly seem as magnificent as it is. I have a hard time coming up with words, even. So, you can see a smoking crater, which is cool. But what is really just breathtaking is to see all the massive destruction. Just mounds and mounds of lava from various eruptions over the past, well, since the beginning of time and all, but they've been marking them for the past several decades.

As we drove and drove we realized we were coming closer to the coast. Which up close really looked like the end of the earth. We got as close as we dared to the edge and it was just a shear cliff drop off. With the waves just pounding and pounding; you could feel it in your heart and it sorta made my head feel like exploding and my heart caught in my chest. The waves were so angry. Crash. "Take that, you lava! I will make you into sand! I'm so mighty and powerful. If you leap into me I will crush you with my power and mangle you with my might. So back away, you. Just back away." So we did. It was frightening to see the raw forces of nature.

We drove as far as we could until we came upon the sign in the pic above. Road Closed. Really? This road here is closed? Huh. Funny, that. Check it! It's so crazy! The lava just over took the road and just fell into the ocean. I mean, you read about this stuff and learn about it and all, and we know that's how an island is formed, but it is so super cool to actually see it. I'm thinking we should take our kids back for a real live look at it. Kinda brings science to life.

We stayed until we saw just about all we could and then made it back to the airport. Where again we were early enough to catch an earlier flight and again were informed it was no problem, as long as we forked over some cash. No, thank you. We spent all our extra cash on our rental car. Speaking of rental cars, when we returned to Honolulu we went to the agency to get our newest rental. And we were told that we could upgrade for only...blah blah...we dutifully declined ever offer. We had our splurge, now it's back to being reasonable. Well, upon conclusion of his sales pitch and it became obvious we weren't gonna bite, we were informed that we got a FREE upgrade to a Ford Focus! Really?! A focus is an upgrade?! What had we rented, a roller skate?? They probably didn't even have the car in the class we rented because no one is really cheap enough to reserve one. Ha ha, who's the sucker now?! We saved like 5 whole dollars. hee hee.

Ah, a long day it was, but I'm so glad we had this adventure. Must lie about lazily on the beach tomorrow!