Day 10 - Hot Soak and Drinking out of a

Volcano National Park is a very popular place to visit, but fortunately for us, most visitors are not early risers and not camped out in the park. We are both so we purposefully saved a lava tube and crater hike for this morning before others arrived. Our timing was perfect and we arrived at the Thurston Lava tubes at a time when we were all alone walking through the cave. This one was much more rounded and didn’t have large open areas like the last one we saw but was once again self guided. Next we took the Kilauea Iki trail and hiked down through the forest to the crater floor across the crater, then back up and along the rim. There is such a difference between the cool jungle and the hot crater floor. We really enjoyed seeing the volcano from different perspectives. Now feeling satisfied we completed all there was to see in the park, we headed to the coast to see where the lava from the 2018 eruption flowed into the ocean. You just can’t believe how large the area of land are that get covered by lava. Nothing can stop it and there was still a road that just ended at a wall of rock. We thought the hot pools that this area had prior to 2018, were covered with lava as the internet has indicated, but we saw a confident young women with her town heading down a trail and followed her. She sopped at a small pool surrounded by rock and said this was one of the originals that survived the lava flow. It was warm, but I felt it necessary to absorb the natural minerals so I soaked for a bit before we left the area.
Now in the large coastal town of Hilo, we stopped at a small outdoor market, then headed to The Hidden Nene to plot our next move. Annemarie had their special, The Bird of Paradise, and got to drink out of the birds butt. Now with a plan we headed to our next camp at a Zen property where brief chaos ensued. We have pretty much concluded that 5pm is quitting time for our touristing. Today we went past that and hangryness and just being tired from a days travel shined through as we were unable to park our van at the new camp. When the owner finally appeared I was a little irritated and she basically said she preferred if we just moved on (remember, this was some sort of Zen, House of Happiness property) When I said why, she said “because you are grumpy”. I smoothed it over by explaining we were just tired from driving and we parked the van. She had beautiful gardens with all the local flowers and Annemarie especially liked her bamboo shower house. We settled down for the night with a glass of wine or two and a nice dinner.Okumaya devam et