In 2022 I made a split second decision to venture back to the beautiful island of Hawaii to try and catch a glimpse of flowing lava (on my bucket list). There were several posts about Mauna Loa erupting for the first time in a long time. So I hopped on the flight out for a few days in hopes of catching a picture or two of the spewing lava!
Since my helicopter tour got cancelled 😦 I tried to make the most of my time there. Turns out the best views I got of the lava were from when I drove up on saddle road, and from the peak of Mauna Kea when I did the stars and summit tour again. I booked a few extra adventures including a night time manta ray snorkel. This ended up being the highlight of the entire trip! One of the crazier wildlife experiences I’ve had! I also got to do some snorkeling during the day, and checked out a luau at night!
Trip 1 – 2021: Just a short hop over from Maui was the big island of Hawai’i! Hawai’i volcanoes national park has one of the world’s most active volcanoes – Kilauea, AND the world’s biggest shield volcano – Mauna Loa. Kilauea had been continuously errupting from 1983 until last year’s major erruption! We got to drive around the park and see some very cool lava flows, craters, and lava rock.
This national park is also home to an endangered Hawaiian goose – the Nene. Mary and I had fun trying to figure out exactly how this one was pronounced
At the end of Chain of craters road there is a majestic sea arch 🙂
I took more pictures coming back up and they are amazing! You just come over this cliff and see these rolling hills with old and new lava flows stretching to the water.
A little artsy picture of a flower 🙂 AND the crater picture! The national parks website has some very cool time lapse footage and comparison pictures to show how this collapse affected the lava flows. The Jaggar museum – which is right at the edge – is still closed as a result of this collapse. It was neat to see it still smoking too.
After exploring the park Mary and I drove down to Punalu’u Black Sand Beach.
Next stop was the Hilton on Hilo – which was SO beautiful. We didn’t mind waiting on the couches in the lobby with this view.
Above is the view from the pool area! I definitely spent some time relaxing here. Below is the sunset – and my last evening with Mary 😦
Doors off helicopter tour was the first thing on Saturday morning! This was my first time in a helicopter so you can tell I was excited 🙂
Below is Fissure 8! This is the main active fissure from the 2018 erruption. It was amazing to see the lava flows from high matching with the maps I had seen!
I took the time to put together a little video from this helicopter tour. If you’ve seen my blog from Haleakala you’ll know this is now video #3 – so still very new at making them. But I had a lot of fun sorting through all the videos!
Saturday evening I did a Stars and Summit tour that took us up to the summit of Mauna Kea. The roads were a bit rough but we had a fun group of people! Some views from the way up and the sunset from the summit!
In this next picture over to the right you can see Haleakala summit – we were just there!
Next stop was our star gazing tour which luckily was a bit lower in elevation so the wind wasn’t quite so strong. I must admit, I sort of ditched our group looking through the telescope and spent the majority of the time learning how to take night time photos on my go pro! Not bad for a first photo shoot. It was unbelievable how many stars we could see!
Last exciting stop on the big island before I headed home was Rainbow Falls. This was really beautiful – and a very short drive from the Hilo area. This national park – and the island were absolutely amazing. I spent most of my time on the Hilo side since this was where the park is – but I’ve heard that the snorkeling on the west side is to die for. So I will definitely be back for that!!
Kelsey's Climb to 59 (+4) 