Wednesday May 4th, 2016.
We got up at a lazy hour on Wed and started our day by getting dressed and heading over to Hilo.
We went to a brewing company to try out some beer. Hana Nui Brewing and Mehana Brewing, same company but two lines of beer. It was pretty good beer and we picked up a few.
We had snacks in the Jeep before heading on our way to the next thing. We overheard a couple talking about an Orchid maze that was on the road to Volcano National Park, so we kept an eye out for it. It wasn’t so much of a maze as a show room but it was pretty cool. They have some beautiful orchids! And some creepy ones. Some had blooms bigger than my hand!
We continued our journey on to the only winery on the island, Volcano Winery. They had some interesting wines. A couple we felt worthy of sharing. 🙂
Then on again to Volcano National Park. We arrived at the visitor center to get my stamps and then took a walk in the rain. The weather difference between Kona and Hilo is amazing. Kona is warm, humid and mostly sunny. Hilo is cloudy, cooler and rainy. The national park was no different. With our sunburns we were ok with coats and cooler weather.
The national park is at 4000 feet and we walked along some sulphur vents and steam vents on the crater rim of Kilauea volcano. It reminded me very much of Yellowstone National Park. Rotten egg smell and yellow stained rocks.
The steam vents were just holes in the ground with, yup, steam coming out. No poisonous gases.
The hike back to the visitor center had some small informational signs about various plants of which I took no pictures. I did take pictures of the plants though.
There was a really neat rock valley we had to walk through.
We then drove to the Jaggar museum at the crater rim to wait for nightfall. We looked at all the items in the museum and saw lots of different kinds of lava expelled from the volcano.
In daylight, you can’t see much more than steam.
However once the sun sets, it becomes amazing!!
We had dinner at the lodge where we could look out and watch the fiery glow. So we had dinner at the edge of an active volcano!!
Then it was start the long trek home.