"I don't know..."

Here are some of the pictures I promised in my previous post, "Nice Timing".

 Kilauea crater from the parking lot of the Jaggar Museum, Volcanoes National Park.

(Firefox knows that Kilauea is a word!)

(Current Volcanic Activity.)

(Closures, Advisories.)

This is the crater of Kilauea Iki, or Son of Kilauea.

There is a trail down to this crater, they tell us that it is pretty warm down there, but you can see people walking around.

Looking past the dome at the "entrance" to Kilauea Iki, you can see the steam rising from Kilauea.

An old (50+ years) lava field; eventually, life returns. If given a chance.

 On our last visit to the island--which I realize now I didn't blog about nearly enough--we took an aerial tour, on Island Hoppers.  Got a few good pics.  If you click-to-enlarge, you should be able to see some lave flowing through this vent...

Click-to-enlarge this one, and you will see, just left of center towards the top, the roofs of a house and a car of someone who got out just in time. Legally, this property (and all similar private property) still belongs to the owners; they just can't figure out what to do with it...

We were told of one guy who's home was isolated by lava, but is still livable; apparently, he makes money renting it out to film crews...

30 years ago this was a famous "black sand" beach, complete with picturesque palm trees. Then the volcano erupted, and flowed into the sea, filling up the bay. Amazingly, the village right off the beach survives. They eke out a living; a little cafe, a little bar, selling trinkets and artwork to tourists...

The white pineapple was incredible.

Back then, if I had been standing where I was when I took this photo, I would have drowned in about 200 feet of water...

The custom has arisen for visitors to plant a coconut palm to try and hurry the development of another beach.

After dinner we got back in the van and drove to the observation area; access is restricted to between 5 and 8 PM; you can stay later, but you have to enter before 8. (We were a tad late, they let us in anyway.)
More trinket sellers, more artists.

Lava flow after dark. Not sure, we may have been UPDATE:  We were pretty darned near the area that was referred to in the previous post.

Photographing these is hard, telephoto lenses notwithstanding. In fact, the telephoto emphasizes any movement, so the tradeoff might not be worth it. On the other hand, with a digital camera, as long as you have batteries and SD card space, why not? (As Matt Helm used to say about old fashioned film, "They make miles of the stuff, why shouldn't I shoot extra and throw the bad shots out?")

Eventually, one of us found a gate post, at the driveway to a house (A house! Yes, people still live in the area!) and we were able to use that for a little added stability.  I suggested to our guide that someone could probably pick up some cash renting tripods; for that matter, you could probably rent out an entire "Lava Photography Kit", and let folks keep the SD Card when they are done.





Last trip, one of the first things we did was a "Circum-Island" bus tour, which was neat in that it gave us a few minutes at a bunch of different attractions, and let us figure out what we wanted to spend time at, but lasted 13 hours, and was exhausting.  Had no intention of doing ti again, but this sounded cool, and we missed the part of the description where it said it was a 13+ hour circum-island tour...

Anyway.  Nui-Pohaku Adventure Tours.  They do bike, and bike-'n'-hike tours, too, and if you forget your jacket on the van, they'll mail it back to you for free...

***

For the Jimmy Buffet impaired, the title is a reference to his song "Volcano":

Now I don't know
I don't know
I don't know where I'm a gonna go
When the volcano blow