After a quick lunch we drove up to the top of Kilauea and checked in at the Volcano House, our hotel for the night. It's built right on the rim of the volcano, and our room looked out onto it. We walked to the "Steaming Bluff" where steam billows out of giant cracks in the ground. Kind of scary to walk over these gaping holes in the ground and wonder if they are getting bigger! Back at the hotel we packed up some water and snacks, along with the camera gear. We first stopped at the Thurston Lava Tube, which we walked through. Then we went to the parking area overlooking the crater and quickly took some pictures. There are poisonous gases there, and we left as soon as we started to cough! We drove about 40 minutes down to the water and parked along the road, just before the end where it was covered over by lava a few years ago. Along the way we saw a number of craters from previous eruptions, and flows of lava that had crossed the road.

We walked out onto the lava field, marvelling at the scope of it and the amazing patterns in that were all around us. We could see the steam rising from the ocean ahead of us on the right, and the smoke from the trees being burned by the lava flow coming down the mountain to our left. It's wild to walk over the lava, it's very uneven and sparkles in the sunlight. At one point Rick noticed a shimmer in the air above a rise in the lava to our left. We walked over towards it and realized that the ground was getting hotter and hotter. Then we saw some cracks in the lava with a bit of steam coming out. At this point we retreated and stuck closer to the marked path. It was marked with stick-on yellow highway reflectors, about the only thing that would work on the uneven ground. The lava showed little sign of wear from the tens of thousands of people who had clearly walked over it. At the end of the trail we had a great view of the steam from the lava going in to the ocean.