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For those of you sick of my vacation posts, this is the last one.  Day eight was our last full day in Hawaii. 

We started it off by taking a helicopter ride.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from the ride.  I’m not a big fan of flying, but surprisingly it wasn’t really scary at all.  The take off and landings in planes is what I really hate.  In a helicopter, take offs and landings are nice and smooth.  It was only a 50 minute ride, but we got some nice views of a couple waterfalls, and got an even closer look Mount Kilauea.  We flew right around the active volcano.  We then went on a search for some open lava.  The flows are always changing, and mostly underground when we were there.  We did see a couple open windows where you could see the lava flowing.  It was pretty damn cool to see.

That afternoon we went to Mauna Kea.  Mauna Kea is the highest point in Hawaii, and one of the best spots in the word to observe space, because it’s above 40% of Earth’s atmosphere, and 90% of the water vapor.  We met our tour at the base.  It was nice to take the tour up because the ride was a little hairy.  About half way up we passed through the clouds.  We saw the only snow removal equipment in Hawaii up there, but sadly there was no snow this time if year.  The summit was amazing.  It was so cool to see all the observatories, even though we couldn’t see inside them.  It was pretty cold and windy up there, so we just stayed at the summit long enough to watch the Sun set.  It was pretty amazing watching the Sun set above the clouds.

After watching the Sun set, we headed back partway down the mountain, where it’s warmer, and a little less windy.  Our tour guide set up a telescope and started pointing out different constellations, and planets, and showing us a few things in the telescope.  I could have stayed there all night looking at the stars.  The view was pretty spectacular.  We saw 8 to 10 meteors, and many satellites.  I don’t think I have ever seen a satellite before.

When we were in Hawaii time didn’t seem to go fast at all, but now that we have been back a month, it really did go fast.  I really enjoyed it, and hope to get back there sometime again in my lifetime.  I just wish it wasn’t so far away, and so expensive.

On day seven we spent the entire day at Volcanoes National Park.  It’s just like your typical national park, lots of trails and nature, but this one has a volcano too!  When we got there we were just in time to catch a ranger guided tour into the caldera of Kilauea.  The caldera was closed because the air quality is always changing, so the only way to get down there is on one of these tours.

It was a nice tour down.  The tour guide pointed out different vegetation and explained how vulnerable the indigenous plants, and animals are because they evolved to not have any defense mechanisms.  People have brought other plants to the islands and they grow wild suffocating out other plants.  Wild pigs are their biggest problem.  They eat big areas of vegetation leaving big holes, which fill up with water.  The water is breading grounds for mosquitoes, which spread disease, and kill indigenous birds, which then aren’t there to pollinate the plants, so even more plants die off.  It one big vicious circle.

Inside the Kilauea caldera was pretty cool.  It’s probably as close as a person can get to Halema’uma’u crater.  That is where it is still active and steaming.  Kilauea is actually the longest active volcano.  It’s been flowing since 1982, and the flows are always changing.  When we were there all the flows were underground.

After the tour to the Kilauea caldera we checked out a few other things in the park, some steam vents, some old lava tubes where lava once flowed underground, and a bunch of old lava flows.  We followed the old lava flows down to the cost.  It was pretty impressive.

We stayed in the park until sunset to see the glow from Halema’uma’u crater.  It was pretty cool, but too far away to get a decent picture.  Seeing Kilauea was pretty darn cool, and obviously a learning experience.

Day five we left Oahu, and went to the Big Island.  We stayed in Hilo, which is the second largest city in Hawaii, but still rather small.  The whole island really felt small townish.  The first day we just went for a drive to check the island out.  We drove up the north shore since our plans for the next day were to go south.  Many areas felt like I was at home.  They had rolling hills of farmland, and little crappy towns with just a bar and convenience store.

Day six we drove sound to Punalu’u Black Sand Beach.  The black sand was weird.  Since it was black, your mind thinks you will get dirty in it, but it’s sand so it just brushes off.  That beach is famous for it’s sea turtles, but they were all out it the water, so we just saw a head peeking up from time to time.

After the beach we kept driving south.  That evening we were going night snorkeling with manta rays in Kona, but had the day to explore.

We then went to South Point.  It’s the southern most tip of the US.  It was a long rough road out there, and it really felt like the middle of nowhere.  At the point there was a cliff and people were jumping off into the ocean.  It was a crazy high cliff.  I didn’t even like to get close to the edge.  The Wife was crazy and wanted to jump.  I wasn’t going to let her, but then a few guys just jumped and were waiting for her in the water.  She jumped and hit the water hard.  She got a huge bruise on her leg, and lost her contacts when she hit the water.  She was a good sport about it though, and didn’t complain much about her pain.

From there we went on to go snorkeling with manta rays.  We went on a short catamaran ride and were just off the shore.  They placed a light rig in the water.  The light attracts plankton, which in turn attracts the manta rays.  It didn’t take long for them to appear.  It was so peaceful just floating in the water and watching how graceful the giant manta rays were.  They would come at the lights and just do flips eating up all the plankton they could get.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from night snorkeling, but it was pretty amazing.  It was just quite and peaceful watching the fish and manta rays swim around.

From there we had a crazy drive across the island.  I just set the GPS and followed it.  It was crazy drive through the middle of nowhere.  It was a very windy road with places that the road was actually missing.  It was super dark, and raining, and half the drive was uphill where it was hard to get over 40 MPH, and the second half was downhill and I never touched the gas peddle for the longest time, and it was hard not to speed.  I was so glad when we finally made it back to our hotel.