Hawaii: day 3

Today was our big driving adventure day. Our goal: to see the volcano. The route(s) that we could take was one of 2 choices. We chose the more scenic route on the north side of the island that took us through different landscapes before arriving in Hilo. We saw desolate areas with volcanic rock, sprawling green fields, lush, thick, dense forests and then rainforest with all sorts of gorgeous greenery and flowers that brought to mind, Fantasy Island.

On a side note, Hector and I had a hankering for whoppers so the iPhone became our travel guide. Yelp finds the closest Burger King on our route through Hilo. Then Hector asks an obvious question of if there is a yarn store in Hilo. Believe it or not, I didn't look this tidbit up before our trip. Usually I'm on top of that bit of fun (for me). This is where Knitmap comes in handy; type in the city, coose your parameters and voila, yarn stores in the area. That's how we found The Yarn Basket. A little difficult to find from the physical address but a phone call straightened that out right away. Hector took the boys in search of ice to leave me alone in yarn happyland. Boy, I was so surprised at the selection and quantitites of yarn in there. I was able to browse and pet all the pretty yarn. There was a local woman who sheared, spun and dyed her own yarn but it was wasn't enough for me to do a small project. I just picked some pretty Noro and Ranco for my Hilo souvenirs. I was deifinitely a happy camper.

Okay, on to the volcano. We drove 28 miles up the mountain to the the Volcano National Park and started exploring right away. First, a stop at the visitor center and rest room. We had sporadic rain in different areas along the way this morning and it was sprinkling when we arrived at the park so I had to pull out a long sleeve shirt for Josh and my hoodie for me but other than that, it soon cleared up and we were pretty comfortable in our shorts and T-shirts.

We saw steam vents, the crater from several viewpoints, the Jagger Museum, sulfur crystals, rainforests, lava flow, lava tubes and the chain of craters. There is just so much to see and even though we rushed through a lot, we still managed to spend 4 hours in the park which is pretty impressive with the kids and all.

Okay, now I'll get to the pictures because that's what you've been waiting for.

entrance to the park.

Gotta have a jumping photo by the crater.

there is no way to tell how massive ths crater is...this is the active part. the flat area around it which extends further around is also the crater.

about to start the sulfur banks trail..told the kids to ignore the sign.

sulfur crystals

These are just from my camera for now. I'll just sum up that we had a super long day, about 6 hours of driving half of which had super winding, hairpins turns that gave me a mega-headache and Tyler got motion sick. Overall, we did have lots of fun and adventures jammed pack into one day.

memories are made of this....