Yep, it's still there.
A wider view of Kilauae caldera at dawn.
This was a nice campground with a big covered pavilion where we could eat out of the rain. We met some interesting people there, including a professor of tropical diseases who has traveled all over the world studying nasty hot climate bugs.
After breakfast we drove to several spots in the park to look at lava, and more lava.
The Big Island is getting bigger. These seaside cliffs are only decades old.
Lava can form into amazing shapes.
A moment of sun in an otherwise rainy day.
We hiked out to a spot to view petroglyphs. There are something like 25,000 in the surrounding area.
The ancient Polynesians not only scratched out these forms in the hard lava stone, but somehow managed to scratch out a life in this forbidding landscape. To plant their taro, they gathered whatever meager soil they could find and made raised beds formed by building rings of stones right on the lava. I think I stick to gardening in Ohio. Sure, we've got winter, but hey, that's when you're supposed to go some place warm.
More volcano stuff.
The shapes and forms are endless.
How about a picture of an animal for a change. This is a Kalij pheasant, another invasive critter. This one came from India, and he was quite bold, nearly attacking me when I didn't offer him a treat.
One of the highlights of our Hawaiian trip was to be the drive up Mauna Kea to attend a star party offered by volunteers at the visitor center 9300 feet up the mountain. We'd been under, or in, the clouds all day, but I assumed we drive above them when we went up the mountain. Wrong. There were probably 100 people waiting to be shown the universe, but all we could see was rain.
But the star people counseled patience, so we retreated to our car and ate pasta salad we'd cooked up at the tree house. It was yummy. Eventually, the clouds settled lower down the mountain, and we were rewarded with views of stars being formed in Orion's belt through a large amateur telescope.
It would have been better if the moon hadn't been up, and if the clouds had moved out earlier. But it was interesting, and I got a new hat!
Nice, huh? Subaru means "unite" in Japanese, and is also their name for the constellation Pleiades. They operate one of the large telescopes on Mauna Kea.
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