Tuesday, April 26

We started today with a bicycle tour of the volocano: - There were about 12 people and a leader, who was very knowledgeable about the geology and Hawaiian biology and culutre. He was really terrific. Our first stop was a really great view of the Halema'uma'u Crater with it's plume in the air, which is mostly sulfur dioxide, which is why we are not alllowed to go closer to it. We were able to go back to this same spot tonight and could see not only the plume, but a very red glow from the lava below, but the camera did not capture this for us. So our daytime photo is :

 Here we are on the old Volcano Road, that was so close to the rim, that it was closed after the 1983 earthquake and they realized that rebulding so close to the rim was too dangerous:

We biked around the rim of the crater, but you saw a lot of this yesterday, so we will not do repeat photos. Was fun to be biking and seeing things so much closer. We stopped at the lava tube, where we had been before, and this time our photo turned out quite well.  A lava tube is where there used to be flowing lava underground, and then, as it cooled from the top down and the flow drained out, it left this tube underground,:

Here we are inside of a small lava cave:

 We then coasted down the Chain of Craters Road quite a ways, but, again, you saw this yesterday, and then had lunch ( in the rain-- this still be rain forest area  ).  We had had a good morning, and no rain to speak of while biking, so we felt lucky.

After a short break , we set out for the beach. It was raining at Volcano, but we were counting on no rain at the beach in Hilo, and D. wanted to go swimming in the Pacific one last time. Our hotel  staff directed us to a really lovely small public beach just outside of Hilo, with black sand , and the swimming was really, really nice-great snorkeling and you could really swim as well. D.especially had a great time- and it only took us 45 minutes to get from Volcano at 3000 feet down to the beach at Hilo!

So, we came back to our great hotel, have had a wonderful dinner, and then went back to the park to check out the plume and lava glow- so now will be off to bed, after getting most of our packing done. We have to say good by to Hawaii tomorrow, as we depart for Eugene, Oregon (where I hear it also rains), where we will be visiting Rebecca and Gil for a few days. Tomorrow is really a travel day, so there may not be a blog for 4/27, we get to Eugene very late. More on 4/28 for sure though. Love to you all.Deb/Neal