Wilderness Wandering

Thursday, January 30,2025 

We arrived at the Maui airport early in the morning to return our rental car. There were weather warnings about a winter storm passing over all the Hawaiian islands bringing gale force winds and torrential rains. Our flight to The Big Island had a connection in Honolulu.  We arrived in Honolulu about 9:30 AM.  While we waited for our flight to Hilo, the bad weather moved in – heavy rain, very gusty winds and very thick fog.  First, all the airlines announced delays. Then a three hour ground stop was announced. Then the flight crews began to time out. At one point we had a plane, but no crew and the crew was on another island and couldn’t get to Honolulu.  Eventually, Tim and I resigned ourselves to the fact we would be sleeping at the airport. Then a miracle happened. The fog diminished. A flight arrived and so did a crew and about 10:30 PM we boarded and took off for Hilo. 

We were supposed to have picked up our rental car at 2:00 PM. Sometime mid afternoon I decided I should call Hertz and let them know that we were delayed and we weren’t sure if we would make it today or early Friday. Jess, a very nice Hertz employee, said that he had two cars left and he would hold one for us. Thank goodness I made that call!

Safely tucked in our rental car about midnight,  we set off in pea soup fog for our cabin rental in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. We were praying that the front desk would be open when we arrived about 12:45 AM. I tried to call, but could only leave a voice mail. We were in luck!! We happily arrived at our tiny cabin and fell into bed. We were in our 53rd National Park! 

Friday, January 31,2025

We heard rain and thunder lashing the cabin while we slept. As it got light, we surveyed our surroundings. The cabin was very tiny, but cute, and we slept very well. There was a queen size bed, a set of bunk beds, long shelves on each side of the cabin, a light fixture in the ceiling and two outlets by the bed. There were no chairs or other furniture.  

There were about 10 cabins with a typical campground bathroom with a shower in the middle. We decided to get ready for the day and drove to Volcano House, a small hotel in the park that has a restaurant. Our plan was to have the breakfast buffet, because we only had airport snacks the entire day before, and then hit the visitor center, get the passport stamped and get some help from a Ranger to formulate a plan. 

Breakfast was very good. Really nice fresh fruit – papaya, star fruit, grapes, and pineapple.

There was an egg station where the chef made eggs to order. The restaurant had a full wall of windows overlooking the Kilauea Crater. We could see puffs of smoke from the volcano.  The volcano most recently became active on December 23,2024, and has paused and restarted seven times since then. The most recent activity ended on January 28,2025. 

By the time we finished breakfast, the rain had lightened and the visitor center was open. The weather advisory was still in effect for the day though.

The plan we developed was to spend a little time at the VC and to drive the scenic drive and see what we could see from the road/car. One thing the Ranger said was that they thought the volcano might reactivate between February 1 to 3. It would be so amazing to see an eruption!! We watched the park movie and were mesmerized by the eruption footage. Next we drove the 4 mile Crater Rim Drive and 38 mile Chain of Craters Drive and stopped at all the overlooks. At the end of the road, we parked and walked out to a viewpoint to see the Holei Sea Arch. Walking on bare lava was very interesting!

We returned to the VC area and decided to visit the Volcano Art Center and Gallery. We were extremely impressed with the stunning woodwork , photography, paintings, feather work and jewelry by Hawaiian artists.

There is another part to the park called the Kahuku Unit that was a huge 184,000 acre  cattle ranch for 150 years. We drove about an hour to get there and learned about Hawaiian cowboys! To transport the cattle from the ranch on the island, the cowboys would swim the cattle to the ship in the harbor where they were then placed in a sling and lifted onto the ship!

The sun was peaking through the clouds on our drive back and we stopped at a beautiful black sand beach called Punalu’u. The black sand is ground up lava and it felt much coarser than typical beach sand. It is very striking though! We returned to Volcano House for dinner and were disappointed in our ahi steak meal, but overall, the rainy day was pretty great!

Saturday, February 1,2025

We slept great and woke up to sunshine. We got ready for a full day of hiking. 

Our first hike was the highly rated 4 mile moderate Kilauea Iki Crater Trail. It was fabulous! We started out at the top of the crater rim in a rainforest. There were many tiny birds flitting overhead and the bird song was spectacular! Overtime, we descended lava steps to the floor of the crater and we hiked across the barren hardened lava floor of the crater.  They used ahu (stacked rocks or cairns) to mark the trail across the lava field since you can’t see a trail.

Then we climbed back up the other end of the crater back into the rainforest. We followed that with a 1/2 mile hike through a lava tube.

Next, we headed to  Devastation Trail and walked about a mile out to a crater overview. All along the road we saw more birds flitting around and singing. Then we heard a different song – we looked at the shoulder of the road and there were a pair of nene and two chicks! We watched them foraging for a bit. We felt very lucky to finally see a Hawaiian goose!

The overview of the Kilauea Crater was very interesting. The volcanoes are sacred to the Hawaiian people and there were several fresh leis and flowers offering at the overlook. Pele is the goddess of the volcanoes and fire.

 Our last hike had a trail head by the VC. We hiked 1 mile of the Crater Rim Trail, where we got a different view of the crater and then to Steaming Bluff, where there are active stream vents along the trail.  We hiked the 1 mile Sulphur Banks Trail back to the VC. 

The vegetation in the rainforest sections of this park is truly spectacular! Much of it looks prehistoric. There are many ferns and several of them develop with beautiful fiddleheads that unfurl over time. Both of us were kind of mesmerized by them. We learned the Tree Fern called Hapuu is the largest fern on the planet. It only grows an inch a year, so when you see one towering over you, it has been around for a while!

We couldn’t stop thinking about the gorgeous artwork at the Gallery from the day before, so we paid another visit and made two small purchases. We bought a dish towel for the van and a pair of fiddle head fern earrings for me. 

After that, we were done in the park. We hadn’t seen anything of Hilo. We left the park heading toward Hilo and looking for lunch. 

Only about one mile from the park, we stumbled across Cafe Ono. It was described as a charming cafe in lush gardens with an art shop. We entered the incredible garden. We were promptly given menus and seated at a table in the garden. We ordered a burrito. The entrees came with soup and salad and chips. Everything was scrumptious and so fresh!

Our waiter Luke told us about the secret garden through the parking lot. After lunch we wandered back there and were blown away by the garden. Mark, a volunteer who spends about 12 hours a week maintaining the garden showed us around a little bit. The creativity was stunning! Then we checked out the art shop with “please touch” signs all over and again were really stunned with the gorgeous art they had. As we left, I commented that Cafe Ono had been a feast for all our senses!

We drove into Hilo and drove around The University of Hawai’i at Hilo campus. Then, Tim was hungry for more banana bread. A highly rated bakery called Bananarama was along our route to the night’s accommodations, so we stopped. We left with two loaves of banana bread, a Hawaiian brownie and a chocolate coconut confection. 

I booked us into another hostel for the night. This time we splurged on a private room. We still had to share a bathroom though.  The Open Gate Hostel is an off grid hostel located outside Pahoa on a lava field. The room names were Zen, Beach, Sunshine, and ours was The Bob Marley! Madelyn, our host was a German transplant to Hawai’i.

She told us a few things we could do close by for the rest of the afternoon. The Isaac Hale Thermal Pools sounded fun. We had been lucky with the weather so far on Saturday, with only a few brief showers while we were in the car. But the clouds gathered while we were driving to Isaac Hale Park. The road to the park seemed to have literally been asphalt steamrolled over the lava, so it was like a fun roller coaster ride.  

We parked and put our raincoats on and walked to the pools. There are five pools of different sizes shapes and temperatures. They are simply indentations in the lava that filled with water. They are naturally heated from steam from volcanic vents. Since it was raining we had them almost to ourselves.  Surprisingly, they are the only hot springs on the island. The one we waded in was 106 degrees and felt wonderful. The rain was coming down hard and we were hungry, so we headed to the highly rated, oddly named Bite the Eye. It was an open air poké restaurant and bar. We ordered a refreshing coconut rum drink and a combo plate of pulled pork for Tim and poké for me. Everything was fabulous. 

We drove back to Open Gate Hostel to eat the chocolate desserts we had purchased earlier and while we were eating in the dining room, we met Wendy, a fellow traveler from Hawai’i. Wendy lives in Alaska and we had some fun conversation about our upcoming Alaska adventures. 

We slept wonderfully in The Bob Marley room with the windows open and the cool ocean breezes. 

Sunday, February 2,2025

The sun is out! Today is a travel day.  We showered, dressed and packed, returned the rental car and prepared to travel to Kauai for our Habitat for Humanity Build. We will fill you in on that next week! 

We thought Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park was really great! Even though Pele didn’t grace us with an eruption!