I don't know why I went to bed last night! We got up at 3:45 am, and Hilary didn't sleep well. She kept waking up with lava-related nightmares! She actually thought that the light switch (that glows orange in the dark) was lava coming for her. I felt so bad!

I was so scared driving down to the lava again in the pitch-black night. The moon had set already, so it was even darker than usual. We rounded a bend in the darkness and my heart nearly stopped. I had thought for a moment that lava had taken out the road right in front of me. It was the brightest orange fire I've ever seen. Luckily for us, the "lava in the middle of the road" think was just an optical illusion. We finally reached the bottom, an area where lava cut the road off in 1995. We parked on the uphill side of the road (which is the rules for parking) so as to make a speedy escape in the event of an explosion or Tsunami!

We had to use our flashlights to walk down road where the lava was and the now familiar aroma and heat blasted us in the face!

All the lava that we saw the day before was now glowing! It was amazing! We were right next to it the whole time without realizing it! I snapped a few quick pictures on my tri-pod. The best one is at dawn when you can see the lava meet the ocean.

While we were drove at the lava flow, we decided to check out the ancient petroglyphs! It was amazing! There were thousands. They looked very similar to those left by the Anasazi Indians in the mainland! The theory was that if you took your child's umbilical chord to this spot and placed it in a hold in the hardened lava and covered it with a stone, that your family would have good fortune!

Anyway, we headed back up to our hotel to eat our three-course breakfast. It was nice, but small! It was a lox platter and I hate lox, so I gave mine to Hilary. She was happy! :) They even had mango sorbet for dessert! She was in heaven!

Now the time is 8:30 AM! I can't believe we haven't even started our day full throttle yet!

We headed back to the park to give ourselves a self-guided tour of the volcano. The drive took us all the way around the semi-dormant volcano caldera, or "cone edge."

This caldera was more than 2 miles wide and 11 miles to drive around the thing! I couldn't fit it in a picture! It was huge!

We saw steam vents that spewed sulfuric gas into the air from liquid magma 250 feet below the surface we were standing and driving. There was so much smoke (or "vog" as it's called)!

There was a dessert on the other side of the mountain, not from lack of rain, but because the rain is acid rain. We saw giant rift zones where curtains of fire and magma shot out of during the last eruption.

The best thing we did was taking a tour around the park. The tour guide was a native Hawaiian and he knew all about all the lore behind the elements of Hawaii. Hilary and I were the only two people on the tour, so it was like a private tour! He was incredibly knowledgeable, but he seemed bitter. The mainland influence has really messed up Hawaii's ecosystem, big-time! I didn't know this, but Hawaii didn't have any bees or wasps on any of the islands before the 1970's! They were imported by accident with Christmas trees!

The best part of the tour was the Thurston Lava tube (even though the tour guide winced that the name "Thurston" because he was instrumental in then overthrow of the existing Hawaiian monarchy.

This lava tube was eerie! We were being dripped on and roots from the trees in the rain forest above us were tickling the backs of our necks! We avoided puddles when we could and I only had to duck once while walking. The ceiling was a good 8-10 feet high. There were at least seven major flows through this tube to the ocean! The path continued on past the "well-lit" section and we opted to stay with the tour guide and go aboveground.

After that, we were tired, so we went back to the bed and breakfast and left for dinner (The Lava Rock Café). When we got back, we relaxed in the outdoor hot tub and played games in the game room. Both a full day and a relaxing one! It's going to be sad to leave the town of Volcano tomorrow, but all in all, we covered a huge sample of the park and that's all there is to do here in this town. :)

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