HAWAII

Big Island 2024 - Volcanos National Park

I’m so excited that I got to hang out in Hawaii again! My brothers and I were invited to a family friend’s wedding on Oahu so we figured we’d make a trip out of it. My partner and I wanted to get scuba certified so we decided to come to Big Island first.

Since Volcanos National Park is at elevation, we needed to come here first. So this was the trek we made on our very first full day. We were staying near Puako Beach on the western side of the island which made Volcanos a 2 hour drive. We didn’t mind though since we got a nice driving tour of the island.

We did the Kīlauea Iki trail and started from the visitor center. We also tacked on the short offshoot to see the Nāhuku (Thurston Lava Tube) making our full hike 6.25 miles.

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This route is a cherry stem as you can see in the map. So you can either choose to go into the crater first and come back out along the rim or vice versa. We elected to walk along the top first, go to the lava tube, then descend.

Views from the hike down into the crater:

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The lava tube is a short offshoot. It’s not a very long lava tube but it’s fun to check out. It is lit up by dim lights which makes it both accessible but feels adventurous. Nothing like the sketchy lava tube experience I had in Oregon a few years back!

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From there we hiked down into the crater and walked through it. Getting to see a different perspective on everything was really cool.

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We hiked back up to the visitor’s center to use the bathroom, cool off, and learn a little bit more about the caldera. We had time to kill before picking up my family from the airport so we did a little drive to a few viewpoints. You can pull off to learn more about the steam vents and get a bird’s eye view of the whole caldera and crater.

Satisfied and ready to head to the airport we started the rest of our drive. It was kind of nice, we 3/4 circumnavigated the island and got to see all the different biomes on the drive!

Wanting a pick-me-up we stopped by Miranda’s Farms Coffee Shop for a latte break. Delicious!