Hey, guess what we learned after hurrying late in the afternoon from South Point to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park just so we could see a little of the place before it closed?  The park never closes!  And during a quick stop at the Visitor Center a very nice ranger told us about all sorts of things we will be able to see this very evening!  Maybe even the glow of hot lava in the cone of an active volcano!  This is so great!

First let's take a little hike through a rain forest.

There's a real lava tube up here.

And some really weird plants.  Bill hopes that thing doesn't grab him.

Kinda creepy.

And just listen to the birds.

But what is a volcano tube anyway?  Well, according to Wikipedia, lava tubes are natural conduits through which lava travels beneath the surface of a lava flow, expelled by a volcano during an eruption. They can be actively draining lava from a source, or can be extinct, meaning the lava flow has ceased and the rock has cooled and left a long, cave-like channel.

Bill is pretty sure the lava has cooled, but he's letting those people go in first.

The vegetation has grown up near the entrance.

Spooky.

It's still not too late to turn back.

Creepies growing from the ceiling.

Doug and Bonnie see a light at the end of the tunnel.

This reminds Bill somewhat of Mammoth Cave.

Bill and Bonnie are enjoying all this.

But let's get outta here.

Much better.  Now we've driven up to the rim of a volcanic crater.  This is Mt. Kilauea's caldera.

Hey, there are people down there.  They're hiking on pahoehoe lava, the smooth kind.  Sure is a long way down.

The sun will set in just a little while.

There's plenty of vegetation on the walls of the caldera.

And the place is huge.

Hey, there's steam escaping down there.

And, um, don't look now but there's steam escaping up here too.

Doug finds a way to warm up his toes.

There's steam everywhere you look.

If you fall in a hole you might get parboiled.

Doug thinks he's found a sauna.

The path is safe, but it's more fun to walk in the steam.

This landscape is amazing.

And...what's that over there?

That's Halema'uma'u, a crater within a crater.

And it seems to be very active.

If you squint, you can read about it here.  It appears this crater exploded in 1924.

Every view of the crater seems more spectacular than the last.

Bill couldn't stop taking pictures.

But then the sun went down.

And Halema'uma'u began to take on a different appearance.

As darkness moves in, we can begin to see the glow of hot lava against the cloud of steam

Hey, this is really something.

Maybe this will give you an idea of what it was like up there at the overlook that evening.

Ooohhh.  Ahhhhh.  Now let's go.  I'm cold and hungry.

Bill has a friend named Vicki that he met in second grade, then lost touch with until they met again in high school, and then lost touch with again until they met on their first day at their new jobs teaching at Porter Junior High School in Memphis.  Then after a few years they lost touch again until ... good old Facebook!  And when Vicki saw a picture of South Point that Bill had posted on his Facebook wall, she posted right back that she and her husband have a house not too far from there, and that Bill really did need to eat at the southernmost restaurant in all the United States:  Hana Hou.  Well we knew where that was!  We'd passed right by it earlier in the day!

And so, after a long, long, really long day of sightseeing, Doug and Bonnie and Bill pulled into Hana Hou for a late dinner.  And we pronounced it good.  So good, that we determined to come back the following morning for some special pie.