We got up at a decent hour (not like we could sleep with the roosters and Coqui frogs anyway! Plus we had a PACKED day planned!), packed up, left our rental, and headed back to Volcanoes National Park.
We knew we wanted to see the Lava Tube first. It was the other main item on our list. We were the only ones there when we arrived. The sign said that there would be no lights on at that time, but there were. It was pretty cool. Kid #4 was a bit anxious about going across the bridge into the tube, but he held my hand and made it across. Around 3/4 of the way through, it was a bit flooded. We walked across a makeshift walkway – where you still got wet – but made it all the way through. We had to leave the stroller behind though. Once we walked up the stairs at the end, we decided to walk back through the tube, instead of taking the loop trail back – mainly because we left the stroller on the other side of the flood. Plus we got to go through the tube again!
On the way back, we stopped at the Kilauea Iki Trailhead. It was a great view of the Kilauea Iki Crater – which apparently has been dormant for decades, but you can still see steam rising from the dried lava! Pretty cool! I tried to get a close up of one of the steam vents, but the steam didn’t come through in the picture. If you look close at the picture of the crater, you can see a pillar of steam in the background. That is the Lava at the Jaggar museum that we had seen the night before. (only this is much farther away). Looks much different in the day!
We then did a quick stop at the Kilauea Visitor Center for the Junior Ranger packets. We didn’t get to them, so we will be doing them here at home (hopefully soon!). There wasn’t a lot to see at the Visitor Center – a few little exhibits and that was about it!
Thus ended our time at Volcanoes National Park. I can’t stress enough the need to spend at least one evening at the park to see the lava – AMAZING. I could spend lots of time at the park if I were hiking, but with our small kids, we did what we could. We had a busy day planned at other sites, so we saw the highlights and headed out. It was an AMAZING park to visit!
We do have a video of the Lava Tube – taken by kid #3 (7 years old). I’ll post it once I edit it down (its long!)
