Got out of bed on Sunday and though I’d had some anxiety dreams and some sleepless bouts, I was very excited. This would be the day I’d see the beginnings of geology! And I’d get to drive over the Saddle Road.
Here’s a description of what went on every morning we were there, and probably many other mornings too:
- At about 4:55 there’s a sudden, loud cacophony of birds, perhaps prompted by the first brightening of dawn. You could set your watch by this. The birds go crazy for about 10 minutes and then calm back down.
- Sprinklers inside the Resort all go off at about 5:00, as if set off by the birds. I can’t believe no one complains about this, because it’s pretty loud. It’s as if all of your neighbors in the cheap apartment block jumped into their showers at once, but it only lasts for 15 minutes or so.
- At about 6:00 the real sunrise occurs and the birds go nuts about this. The day has started and they’ve been waiting all night to pursue their lines of conversation about the choicest spots or mates.
- Soon after that the sun has risen to the point where it starts burning through the curtains. Luckily, we were not on the East side of the complex and so had some time before the sun cleared the mountains and shone on us.
Time to wake up, do exercises, and eat some yogurt and granola on the balcony, while fending off the mynas and sparrows … which was a good morning routine. But then it was time to get ready for the day. Sarah was making coffee in the room, but we were desperately low on cups, so I went down to the coffee shop in the Ocean Tower and got a black iced … for $6.01 (and they gave me back 99 cents in change, come on)! At least I got to keep the cup, and we made good use of it over the next few days.
As I mentioned, we had brought clothes for a variety of situations. We had the benefit of a local, timely forecast that morning though, and the wildly different weather possibilities we had prepared for were narrowed down. So we didn’t have to over-pack, but each of us still brought along sweatshirts, slickers, boots and sandals (some wore one, some the other), hats, and sunglasses, as well as the few PB&B sandwiches we had left,+ some bananas, and lots of water bottles.
We had found a bottle-filling station with good water near the front lobby, and our routine involved stopping there each morning when we finally achieved the end of the Dog-blessed Museum Walkway. We would fill up all of our bottles, giving way once in a while to less serious folks who just needed a top-off. They sometimes looked at us and all our bottles strangely, even though we were saving the Earth.
So we were off for the sky and the East and the volcanoes! Not too early but not too late. Escaping the event horizon of Waikoloa Drive can be tough, but we were out of there at last (avoiding many mynas on the road with death wishes … Sarah and Dave eventually forbade me from steering around them), rocketing up the Waikoloa Road. Then right on 19, and then after 3 miles left on Daniel K. Inouye Turnpike (a.k.a. the New Saddle Road) up into the Hawaiʻi-sphere.
The speed limit was up to 60 here and I pushed it a bit, as did some of the few other cars. Some lagged behind on the mountainside, but I kept the hammer down and the Elantra responded very well. I should mention that it had lane detection alerts, and though we tried to turn this feature off it persisted in beeping at me when I would get near a white line, which sometimes I needed to do to save time. The old Saddle Road came in on the left and then sooner than we expected, the speed limit dropped to 45 and the Pōhakuloa Training Area appeared on our right (acknowledged with a double bird), then the Mauna Kea recreation area appeared on our left, and then we crested the saddle at 6632 feet.
We kept bombing over the crest (the speed limit had gone back up to 60), and then heading down and down and down. The surrounding landscape changed subtly. On the way uphill we had been on the leeward side of the mountains and it was an arid landscape with lots of startlingly steep mounds of dirt (these were pu'u, volcanic hills, some of which were kīpuka) and random tufts of grass. On the windward side there were fields of lava (pāhoehoe alternated with ʻaʻā) smooth , weathered slopes headed down towards the sea, and sudden bright patches of red succulents. And the dirt was a darker, damper color.
Rain started up of course, orographic showers don’t you know; Hilo is one of the rainiest cites in the world and we were experiencing it as we hurtled down the Saddle Road and route 200 turned into route 2000. You need to take a right near the end of it in a suburban neighborhood and then jog over on Komohana Street to get down to route 11, this section’s part of the Hawaiian Belt Road. This route avoids downtown and then you can start back up the long uphill trek towards Volcano. And that’s what we did, gaping at the sudden McDonalds, Taco Bells and auto parts stores (this was America after all) while realizing that they had much better gas prices over on this side of the Island.
But soon we were out of town and, as I say, on another long uphill climb, this time ascending the side of Kīlauea. After a long trip (actually just about 2 hours from the Resort) we passed the town of Volcano and finally pulled into Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. We were totally psyched and had the Senior Lifetime Pass in its holder on our rear-view. The woman at the gate mentioned that we did not have to display the pass, but checked my ID with the seriousness the occasion called for. I love National Parks, and she realized what an occasion this was for us. People at Minute Man National Historical Park have told me, barely containing their excitement, “I’ve *always* wanted to visit this Park and I’m finally here!” That’s the way we felt, and I can imagine the little empathic thrill for the NPS employee.
Oh boy, this was as exciting and as underwhelming as you might imagine. When you get to the edge of the Grand Canyon or enter Yosemite you get an incredible rush. But that wasn’t the story here; there’s no grand entrance and as with many Parks, this one has to grow on you a bit. And that was fine with us, we were ready for that. We looked around some in the crowded Visitor Center (it was shoulder season, but it was Sunday … and it was Mother’s Day, as it had been when we visited Yosemite in 2012), and I stood in line to talk to a Ranger. When you go to a NPS site, always talk to a Ranger first, you’ll be glad you did.
Actually, it was a volunteer, but that’s ok. Signs all over the VC announced that there was no lava flowing anywhere on the Island. This was incredibly disappointing to many people, and they had a hard time understanding that. Why call it “Volcanoes Park” if we can’t jump into one? The truth of the moment was that there had been an eruption in the East Rift Zone of Kīlauea in 2018, and that a year later the Park was still limiting access to make sure people were safe, and the lava was still at an ebb. The earthquakes and aftershocks associated with the eruption had made many parts of the Park unstable, and they weren’t letting people go there. This was disappointing too, but we didn’t want to get a load of rock on our heads or be swallowed up in a sudden rift, and so were ok with it. What we wanted was to get out and see what we could, we were sure it would be fantastic. And it was.
I had had my mind set on the Kīlauea Iki Trail, but enough of that was closed (as was Thurston Lava Tube) so you couldn’t do it as a loop. I asked the volunteer for an alternative and he very skillfully suggested a hike of about that length, encompassing what could be safely visited around Kīlauea Caldera at that time. So that’s what we did! He also pointed out a few places we might want to stop/hike at, further down Chain of Craters Road when I told him we planned to go down there next.
OK, we put on our packs, tightened our belts, and went for it. And as at every National Park I’ve visited, the beauty took over very quickly. We left the busy VC area, and were soon on the trail with a few other scattered groups, seeing wonders. And we sure smelled them at the first wonder, the Sulphur Banks area. The ground all around the caldera lets off steam, the result of the hot ground boiling the water that seeps down into the rifts. At Sulphur Banks this steam is mixed with volcanic gasses, which here stink of sulphur and so are pretty easily identifiable. In other places the volcanic gasses are concentrated enough to become a real danger to oxygen-breathers but here, as with gas from your stove, they’re marked by their odor. The gasses have stained the exposed banks into fantastic colors and sure were stinky.
Farther down the trail, the Earth was younger and the more shallow rifts in it collected rainwater (a fine mist had started, it was an overcast morning on the mountainside, though bright) and spewed it back out as spouts and clouds of steam. As mentioned, we were at a loss to identify almost all of the bushes and trees we were seeing, and we were captivated by them. But the most amazing part was that we’d be peering at the plants and then be suddenly surrounded by wafts of steam, alternating with bright shafts of sunlight poking through the low cover.
We got back to the main road and followed that for a bit before dipping back into the woods, right before the entrance to Kīlauea Military Camp. Soon we were overlooking the caldera itself, as close as a tourist could get in May 2019. Within Kīlauea Caldera is Halemaʻumaʻu Crater; at some times you can see magma actually bubbling up to the top of this crater, but we were not able to approach anywhere near enough for that, and also the magma level is way down since the 2018 eruptions. So what we saw was not spectacular, but was probably just as meaningful.
We could see for miles and miles to the West and to the South, and the caldera gaped before us. Everything in the distance was brown and gray and black and white. There were no colors in the caldera, just miles of mud and rock and geysers of steam where the Earth had cracked. Just in front of us the lush vegetation dropped off, and one was alarmed by the realization that the edge of the caldera was creeping slowly towards us. As we walked along the Crater Rim Trail, we saw folds and gaps in the ground where the next wave of terra firma was about to fall into the crevasse, as delineated by the jets of steam rising from these gaps.
We passed a roadside turnout, where the hordes of tourists who don’t like to leave their cars far behind had gathered for selfies. Many of these people were very big, and we moved past that section pretty quickly, thinking that they might be complicit in the next collapse. Another mile or so down the trail and we finally made it back to the VC, where we were ready for lunch.
The few available picnic tables were occupied and the intermittent rain had started up again. But we found a vacant bench on the front porch of the Volcano Art Center Gallery, which is really worth a look, and ate our PB&B sandwiches there. I fired up my phone and was able to watch highlights of the Bruins game two 6-2 victory over Carolina. The game had started at 9:00 our time and was over by lunch.
We took turns checking out the Art Center, which had some amazing stuff. Nothing we could afford though!
OK, what next? We knew we wanted to drive down Chain of Craters Road; we saw a few places we wanted to stop at along there, and that informal plan turned out great. Jumped in the car and soon were headed precipitously downhill yet again, twisting and turning past the half-closed Kīlauea Iki trailhead and Thurston Lava Tube. We eschewed more trails around the caldera and headed down and down to see the devastation (or creation?) it had wrought.
What we were headed for first was the Mauna Ulu trailhead area. There’s an option of going for a long hike into the backcountry at that trailhead, but we instead just decided to poke around. And this was just amazing!
We left the car amongst lush vegetation in the parking lot and headed a bit down the trail and suddenly we were in another world. We were surrounded by heaps of incredibly jagged, threatening, and fragile ʻaʻā lava, like something Frodo and Sam would see on Mount Doom. On one side it towered up over us like jagged tarballs, and on another side it had shattered into shards of black glass. We followed the cairns left by the NPS into the lava field and saw rifts in the Earth where the lava had recently bubbled up. If you fell down those rifts you might be in serious trouble.
This was such new rock! It was like a demon glass blower inside those rifts had spewed these boulders up onto the plateau we were standing on, and then you realized that actually the whole plateau was part of the process itself. Though high on a mountain, we were in a part of the world that hadn’t existed for that long and was made entirely of the volcanic stuff we were seeing. When I think back on the trip, though Mauna Ulu was nowhere near the prettiest or most spectacular sight, this was one of the most impactful.
Wow! We visited the vault toilets and got back in the car and continued down the steep road, and soon were blown away even more when the vegetation dropped away and we were staring out at miles and miles of steeply pitched, just hardened lava, ending in the beautiful blue Pacific Ocean. This landscape of black rock, blue sea and sky, and white clouds was only broken by a few patches of green trees, as the road pitched more and more steeply downhill, towards the sea.
We finally reached another plateau, thousands of feet down but still way above the ocean. Our next stop was the Pu‘u Loa Petroglyphs trail. We packed water for this hike, and we needed it. The black rock on either side had been soaking up the sun all day and it radiated the heat back at us as we scampered over the pāhoehoe lava toward the boardwalk the NPS had erected around the biggest concentrations of petroglyphs. If not for the stiff wind, that we barely noticed because it was so steady, we would have roasted.
Amazing as the petroglyphs are (why did they carve them so far from the road we wondered??), we were even more amazed by the undulations and wrinkles in the pāhoehoe. It sure was bleak out here at first glance, but as in most desert situations, there was amazing life in the cracks. We saw the most beautiful flowers out in the reaches of that incredibly extensive lava field, and rows of ferns thriving in creases in the rock.
Another amazing place! We’d been underwhelmed by Volcanoes earlier in the day, but knew this was short-sighted and by that point later in the day we were gibbering lunatics about the Park, and that wasn’t just because of the heat. Add this near the top of the list of great places in the US that everyone should see. And then we were off and down the road again. And though it was less precipitous at this point, it was just as spectacular.
Though we were still a few miles from the sea, we could see huge waves crashing on the cliffs and fountains of white and blue water thrown into the sky. It was incredible, watching the ocean swells mash against the cliffs from a distance. And when we got close and parked and made our way out there, it was even more incredible. Lots of people were down at the end of the road, but we were all pretty silent, just imagining the miles and miles of lava that had flowed down the mountain behind us to form these majestic cliffs and watching the dramatic efforts of the ocean to beat back the advance of stone. The powerful Pacific pulled back and then swelled again and again against the cliffs, “When meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky” … but on a scale that Clement Clarke Moore would never have imagined. With each wave we could feel the cliffs shake.
And below us was the Holei Sea Arch, awash in the swells. For once, I was glad I was not kayaking here!
So that was the end of the Park for us. We knew that we’d better get on the road if we were going to get back to Waikoloa that evening … it sure seemed like a long way away. Back up that incredible road (the Elantra was a champion again, but it’s a good thing I’m not a nervous driver because some of the switchbacks seemed carved into the sky itself, and at many points if I’d dropped the joint we would have been screaming downhill at a very fast pace), and then finally way back up the mountain, back into the deep green forest.
At last we arrived up at the top of the road … and then we left the Park behind, downhill again towards Volcano and Hilo beyond that. We had to figure out what to do about food! We realized that a) we had to eat something somewhere soon and beer would be a plus, b) Hilo is notorious for being closed up on a Sunday, and c) it was Mother’s Day and if there was anywhere that was open it would probably be packed. But Sarah had been studying the guidebook and the internet on her phone and found a place that might be weird enough for us, the Seaside Restaurant and Aqua Farm on the outskirts of Hilo.
Dave’s phone had reception so he tried them and got through. Amazingly, they’d just had a cancellation and so we grabbed the reservation for 6:00, while still around 45 minutes away. Hawaiʻi is pretty big and it took us a while to get there, down and down and down through thick vegetation on the country highway into Hilo, and then past the miles and miles of American strip development with its warehouses, fast food joints, and poorly constructed housing until we approached a downtown. There we turned right and followed the coast road to the South of Hilo, where there was a city park set between two breakwaters, and suddenly a funky restaurant by a fishpond on the right.
This was the Seaside and we were just able to squeeze into the last parking place in their lot. Can’t say anything bad about this dining experience! They sat us down at a nice table with a view of the ocean, got us some Kona beers and mixed drinks as soon as you can imagine, and told us the catch of the dayay: ahi, mahi-mahi, and ono. My Dog, how to choose?!?
Both Sarah and I went for the ono, one of us getting the eponymous “catch of the day” and the other getting some kind of special. I forget the details, but both came with our choice of sauces and we both selected a macadamia-pesto sauce that was to die for. This was one of the best seafood dinners I’ve ever had. Dave opted for something a bit lighter, but it was exquisite too. And when we finished they gave Sarah a Mother’s Day rose!
We could have stayed there forever, but the crowd at the restaurant was starting to thin out a bit and we knew we had a long road in front of us yet. Finally stumbled out into the still crowded parking lot and the humidity and sea breeze, and took off.
Stunningly, it was pretty flat for a few miles back to the beginning of the Saddle Road! But soon we were climbing and climbing again, and then the night closed in and we got up there several thousand feet, and then the rain started. And this rain got very serious, it was driving down pretty hard as we rocketed farther and farther into the clouds. Luckily, the Saddle Road is lined with reflectors and though it was pitch black and pouring rain with thick fog, our path up the mountain was plainly marked.
We reached the top and started steeply downhill, and soon were below the dark clouds, and then were out of the rain. Sooner than expected, we got back to 19 and traversed the few miles over to the Waikoloa Road, and motored on down that. We were back in the coastal Resort area of South Kohala before we knew it, seemingly worlds away from the volcanoes and the Seaside Restaurant. How could we tell any of these people at the Resort what we’d experienced that day?
Parked the car, climbed the entrance hill, and then walked the long perp walk down the Museum Walkway, and finally back to the Ocean Tower. Back to our room and we all took deep sighs … we’d seen some pretty amazing stuff that day!
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