Hawaii - Day Three

Once again, we woke up early. We were anxious to get to Volcano National Park, and decided to head over for the day. It is a 1.5 hour drive from our hotel across the saddle road again. It was a gorgeous day, no clouds, so I was okay with it. We got to Volcano Park, and decided to go on a hike. We came prepared with shoes, backpacks, and water. The hike we went on, went along the top of a crater, and then down walking on the now cooled, lava lake in the bottom, and back up. The hike was over a 4 mile hike, and took us a little over 2 hours. This hike was on the crater that erupted in 1959 and 1960. It was kind of crazy. The first part of the hike was through gorgeous rain forests. It went down and then we walked - about a mile - across the cooled lava. It was crazy. We wondered how long they let it cool before making a hike safe for the public? We made our way back up onto the crater, and took another detour to a lava tube. We walked through it. It was amazing. Volcanoes truly are an amazing phenomenon. While at Volcano National Park, we learned that due to the eruption that happened last month (in March) there was no longer any flowing lava on the island. That determined our decision NOT to do a helicopter tour. If we couldn't see lava - it couldn't beat the helicopter tour we took on Kauai a few years ago. The weather turned rainy and really foggy, so we decided to head home, this time to the south of the island. We found an awesome black sand beach complete with sunbathing turtles! I loved every second of it. We then made it to the Southern Most Point of the United States for sunset. It was so crazy how the trees were totally blown to the side making them grow that way. It was incredible to see! We were so tired after traveling so much for 2 days, that we couldn't WAIT for a relaxing vacation day!