Halema'uma'u Crater

Today we drove to the Hawaii Volcanes National Park which is around 50 miles away from our house. When we started it was super hot, but during the drive it started to rain and the volcano is at 13,000 feet altitude so yeah when we got out of car at the visitor center we changed from shorts to long jeans! You have to ask at the visitor center which parts of the crater rim are open and which are closed. "Pele" - that's how natives call the volcano, is pretty active and there is a lot of steam and dangerous oxids and therfore parts are closed. We did a part of the crater rim first, which lead us to the Jaggar Museum from where you have a great look over the whole volcano. There is still steam coming out of it and it's pretty impressive!!

We continued to the steam tubs out of which hot steam is coming out.

The lava tubes were next...

The devastation trail was pretty cool! The landscape was pretty impressive and totally dry!

 My shirt matches the nature... Not!

Our next stop was really close to the sea at Holei Sea Arch, where you could see that the lava once was going into the ocean.

The Pu'u Loa Petroglyphs weren't really worth going, but it was a great hike over the lava rocks.

With a stop at an overlook we drove to the Kileau Iki Trail.

The trail was amazing! It was a 4 mile hike which goes directly into the crater. There is steam coming out of some lava rocks and the landscape is breathtaking. Kind of feels like a landing on Mars ;-)

It was a pretty exhausting day, because of the driving and the hikes we did. Tomorrow we are leaving our nature paradise and are going to Kona for some more beach days!