choi 2: the volcano-ing

Choi was coming back to Hawaii to visit her parents, so we arranged to meet for an adventure on the Big Island. She gets enough tropical/beach time otherwise, so it was a good opportunity to play around on the volcanos and such. One crazy thing I realized during this trip was that Choi and I have known each other for almost 10 years now! 10 years! I'm so old.

Anyway, we started off (after breakfast at Ken's) by driving up to the summit of Mauna Kea for an astronomy tour. Even though it had to be 45 mph sustained winds and we both were well-prepared for the cold in our hoodies, we decided it would be wise to hike out to the "true" summit to check out the views to the northeast. Its amazing how brutal a 30-minute hike can be at 14,000 feet. We checked out all the telescopes and I finally explained what the hell I've been doing here for nearly 6 years (outside of surfing the web in my office - which is probably 60% of my time).

After getting back to Hilo (Choi was not a fan of the winding, downhill Saddle Road - I don't blame her) we had a delicious dinner at Hilo Bay Cafe and then drove our rental to Volcanoes National Park on the south side of the island. We were staying in this little tiny log cabin in the woods (because it was cheap), which turned out to be pretty silly. As it was dark and there was not much to do, Choi promptly fell asleep around 8:30pm. The cabin was comfortable enough, although it got cold during the night (40s), and we never saw it during the day. We left and headed to the Kilauea Caldera before dawn. We drove down to the ocean where the recent lava flows end, but it was rainy and the air quality was poor due to the prevailing winds carrying sulfur fumes and small glass particles from the flows and vents to the east. We hiked out in the lava fields for quite a while without any other tourists around, which was pretty unique in my experience.

The weather cleared up a bit and we hiked out to some ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs. There were lots of rock carvings of little men and circles, the latter of which were used to deposit the umbilical cords of newborns. We took our time driving back up the cliffs were lava flows had spilled over in the past 50 years or so, and checked out the Thurston lava tube back in the rainforest at 4000 feet. For a late lunch we headed back to Hilo and then went up the coast a bit to check out the beautiful Akaka Falls (1000 foot? waterfall). After a hike down to the ocean near the botanical gardens, it was time to head back to the airport. It was a quick trip, but you can pack a hell of a lot in these kinds of 36-hour adventures in Hawaii.