Kilauea Day

 

Saturday my dad goes down to the transfer station in his truck to get free mulch. He leaves at 5:something or other to line up with a ton of other residents in their trucks. This is a very community event.

They get there before it opens and the line stretches around the road for a long ways, maybe a quarter mile of pickups waiting for the gates to open.

It’s a heavily social event full of people getting out of their trucks to chat and walk their dogs and sas one another.

My dad usually meets up with a guy named Brian, who is a grower. In this particular morning Brian brought these giant hybrid apple bananas.

We might go up and see his farm later.

My dad says that before Covid there was never a line. I feel free mulch might be the Hawai’i equivalent of sourdough starters. The nesting semi-defense response of everybody trying to do for themselves here. 

The mulch is composting mulch and in this warm wet climate turns to soil rapidly. Lots of places have very very little soil. You might not think so given all the green and growing things but at my dad’s place the soils is maybe 3 inches deep and then it’s a sheet of lava flow rock. So he gets mulch and macnut husks and a giant pry bar and he makes it all arable. It’s so much work. He is out full-time-job amounts of time and then some. It’s a labor of love but for sure it’s LABOR.

After we got the mulch we headed over to Safeway to pick up some fantastic breakfast burritos. 

If you find yourself in Hawaii go over to Safeway. Those burritos are cheap and filling and fully customizable. 

Mine had pepper jack, seasoned potato wedges, spinach, tomato, red onion, and chipotle sauce. 

We orders some for each of the family and headed home by 8:30.

Then we cut up some fruit from the yard and poured some juice and dug in.

Then we headed out for the adventure for the day. We (minus Kiernan) went to Volcanos National Park. 

Normally this is around 35 dollars but my dad kindly escorted us with his local knowledge and park pass and so we got in free with a great guide to boot. 

 

After he parked we walked through a very pretty path to Volcano House. I’d never heard of it before but it is famous. There was a plaque listing all the illustrious dignitaries who had visited for the view. 

 Inside there are two gift shops and a coffee bar and a few restaurants. 

There are cool paintings and statues and historical themed videos all about Kīlauea and Pele who resides there. 

Here is a painting from the 1890s

Here is a bronze from the 1930s. 

I was enjoying the fire and the art then I turned around and saw this:

I had no idea we were on the rim. I genuinely stopped short with a woahhh. 

I rushed right out. 

Breathtaking y’all.

We read signs and looked around and listened to dad tell us about the history of the volcano. 

Fairly recently (2018) there was a major shift in the lava pool under here to the south and east. When it shifted a ton of the crater caved in on itself. 

After that we got back to the car to drive around to different vantage points. We went to the steam vents which are just over the current eruption area. 

Then we drove across to the head of the Kīlauea Iki hiking trail. 

We took about a 4 mile loop so that we could include a walk through the Thurston lava tube .

This trail heads down fairly steeply from the rim through the jungle to the cooled lava lake at the bottom. 

All the terrain changes and elevation switch-ups make this one of the coolest and most beautiful hikes I’ve done. 

I took a bevy of pictures.