Moving On

We left Maui. I should have a frown on my face because I was really sad to be leaving.

But it wasn't time to go home yet. Back, months ago, when Greg asked if we could plan this trip (he said he needed something to look forward to knowing Claire was headed off to college), we would have been headed home today but as it turned out, a month or so ago he realized he would have some business on the Big Island. So we tacked it onto the end of our "Empty Nest Consulation" trip. Greg's vacation really did kind of come to an end as he spent most of the day with his eyes and fingers on his phone, arranging things for his business in Kona. But, it wasn't going to be all about work. We were going to see the volcano! And we did!

It was cold up top Kilauea. With clouds all around, while driving up and getting to the visitor center, it rained. Further up the road is the volcano site. It was misty on and off and it grew cooler as the sunset approached. We were torn what to do (I will explain later) but we opted to hang out until it got dark so we could see the glow of the volcano. It being chilly, for two people dressed for warm sun, we decided to sit in the car for awhile.

Once the sunset and the night grew darker the glow of the volcano became stronger. It was so cool! And really very beautiful. I think with the extra cloud cover it added more red glow.

A story for future Big Island travelers - There is a difference between seeing the Volcano and seeing Lava. They are in two different places. To see each, is 3 hours of traveling time. Knowing what we do now, we would have done things differently. We would have gone to the lava flow first. That site lets the last car in at 8pm. It gets dark between 6:30 and 7. We would have been able to see the lava in the dark and still had time to get up to the volcano site and see it glow at night - it is open until 10pm. It would have made for a late night getting to our hotel in Kona, on the opposite side of the island, but we would have been able to see both at night. (Granted, you may not always be able to see lava - they call it the Lava Lottery). What we ended up doing, based on good information, was to go up to the volcano first - with all intentions of leaving there to get back to the lava to see it in the dark. Two information people in Hilo had made it sound like the lava was the better site. And I guess they and us were under the impression we didn't have time to do both - in the dark. We had been encouraged, however, to ask at the volcano visitor center if the lava was visible because sometimes you just can't see it. So if we found out we wouldn't be able to see lava we would just hang out around the volcano longer. As it turned out, the ranger we talked to told us about the Lava Lottery and said that we'd get the biggest wow factor from seeing the volcano at night. So we decided to stay up at the volcano. We were there for a couple hours. Thus why we opted to hang out in the car to keep warm while we waited for it to get dark. Also - had we opted to do it differently we would have had time to drive around Hilo and "the wet side" of the island. We've not done that before.