Today we went to the Thurston Lava Tube to take our biennial lava tube picture. It was a bit more difficult this year because our new camera, for some reason, didn't like the low light and wouldn't take the picture even when the setting was 'no flash'. ARGH! Took a while to finally get the stinking picture taken, and keep everyone still while the shutter stayed open. Not as good as other years, but it works! It has been extremely rainy here, so the tube was really dripping and was full of puddles. Always very cool to know lava was flowing through this huge tube!
After the lava tube, we decided to hike Devastation Trail. This was a trail we had never done, so we didn't know what to expect. It ended up being a great trail! This trail is a paved path through a forested area that was devastated by falling cinder from the lava fountains of the 1959 Kilauea Iki eruption. It was an easy hike and we found many iridescent pieces of lava, gold lava, and rainbow-colored lava. We also found lots of Pele's tears - small pieces of solidified lava drops formed when airborne particles of molten material fuse into tearlike drops of volcanic glass. Pele's tears are black in color. We also found delicate strands of Pele's hair -created when the lava is spun into the air and strung out to create thin fibers of glass. Very cool!
Next we went down Chain of Craters road and explored some of the previous lava flows until we reached the end of the road. Lava has covered 9 or so miles of the road, so we walked to where it ended. We could see the plumes from the current eruption, but it was miles away -- over 9 miles to be exact. We still want to see it entering the ocean, so we may try to go to it if the stupid rain and drizzle would ever stop!!
I posted pictures here.
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