This took me a while to write up. I haven’t been in the mood to post. I hope to feel inspired to post more regularly–phf
During my girl’s zoom meeting, I mentioned that I wanted to see the eruption at Kilauea Volcano. Thinking no one would be interested, “J” said she would go with me to my surprise. Three weeks later, four more people, including one husband, were off to Hawaii Island for a two-day visit.
With no solid plan, only to see Kilauea at night, we started the day off meeting at Ken’s House of Pancake for breakfast and a planning session. Ken’s is a Hilo landmark, close to the airport, great to start the trip with a good breakfast.
After our breakfast and planning session, we were off to the Bayfront area to check out the farmers market and the shops. My list from mom was avocados, fishcake, and anything else that’s good.
The produce farmers market is under a pavilion, and across the street is the craft section. Here are a few things I picked up there.
After an afternoon of roaming, we made our way to KTA supermarket to pick up some dinner and snacks for the evening adventure to Kilauea volcano. Then off to evening accommodation at a friend’s Airbnb. It’s a two-bedroom guesthouse in Kurtistown halfway between Volcano and Hilo. There were animals on the property to distract us from unpacking: a steer called Red, a horse (I forgot his name), Pluto the goat, two shy cats, and many feral chickens.
After a quick snack, we were off to Volcano National Park to start our adventure to see the current eruptions. With a quick pit stop at the visitor center, we follow the line of cars to the end of the road to Uekahuna. It was a little past sunset, and the sky had cleared to present us with beautiful blues and oranges.
From this vantage point, we could see the orange glow of the eruption. It was just beyond the cliff. It had turned cold, I forgot my rain jacket to block the wind. Luckily I was smart enough to bring my shawl and I used it as a head/neck scarf to keep me warm.
The Glow
The skies cleared to present us with a beautiful show of stars and planets. Several of my friends were using an app to identify the stars. In our stargazing, we caught the attention of a friendly man that helped us identify more stars then pointed to the people on the other side of the Halema’uma’u Crater. He told us that you needed to hike into the viewing point. He said 3/4 of a mile from the parking area 3/4 mile to the viewing point (I think most of my friends only heard 3/4 of a mile). We all agreed it was doable and off we went to our next adventure. (Thank you to “C” for bringing all of her torches as I forgot mine back at the Airbnb)
The almost full lighted our way to the viewing area. The park rangers did a great job at directing us and the hundreds of others making our way to see the lava flow. Once we got there, it was pretty amazing. I didn’t expect the flow to be so steady.
It was a pretty magical night. The skies cleared for a beautiful starry sky, there was an almost full moon rise, and Madame Pele’s show was spectacular. What more could I ask for. Sometimes it’s good to say out loud what you want to do. It may just happen.
Princess Hot Flash 
Great post and good photo! You’re right about mentioning what you’d like to do because it just might work out. What a wonderful time you had. The flow was great. When we lived there my daughter and her class did power point presentation on a CD and a small group took it to the Big Island and presented it to the school Ellison Onizuku attended. They got to see Kilauea . She had one pic that she took pointing down and you can see her shoes and the lava in the same pic. Yikes! That was a little too close. I wish we still had the pic but we lost it in our moves. Thanks for sharing this. Hey, we should meet at Ken’s Pancake House! I love that place. Every time I worked on the Big Island whoever picked me up stopped there for our breakfast.
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