Volcanoes National Park.
It will provide you with one of the rare looks inside the inner workings
of an actively erupting volcano.
Clearly, Hawaii’s most active volcano is Kilauea. This small volcano has been actively erupting
for several years now and few guided tours of the Big Island of Hawaii will
fail to take you to this fascinating place.
In some cases, you can even stay overnight there at the small hotel
called the Volcano House.
Most guided tours will begin in the visitor’s center where
you can see and hear about what’s currently going on with Kilauea, including up
to the minute information on what is happening now. Across the street is the Volcano House, which
offers both rooms to stay in and a restaurant overlooking Kilauea’s caldera.
It is often foggy or rainy in the area and most guided tours
of the park will take that into account and provide you with umbrellas.
There are places near the visitor center where you can walk but, for the
most part, you’ll need to drive.
Near the visitor center are
several warm steam vents coming up from the earth and a vast plain, which is a
sulfur field that you can walk to.
The sulfur fields are smelly but quite beautiful. The sulfur is a bright yellow color and, in
some situations, you will be able to see the steam rising from the ground. Take home a piece of sulfur as a souvenir.
Guided tours of the area will explain for you exactly how these sulfur fields
came to be.
Next, it’s time to get into a vehicle and travel around the
caldera, a deep depression that marks the top of a major eruption. Many guided tours will allow you to get out
and take some pictures and most will take you to the observatory about halfway
around the circular caldera so you can get the broadest view of the area.
Toward the end of your tour around the caldera, most guided
tours will let you get out and walk the amazing lava fields, representing areas
of recent eruptions that are as desolate as the moon and covered in black
lava. Some of the lava is ropy and smooth
and is called pahoehoe lava. The
pricklier lava is called a’a lava and you’ll see that type, too.
Comprehensive guided tours of the Volcanoes National Park
will take you to the Thurston Lava Tube—a tube created by flowing and cooling
lava that has been cleaned out for visitors to actually walk through. Located among the rain forest area of the
island, the lava tube is both interesting and beautiful.
The highlight of most guided tours of the park is a trip to
where the volcano is currently erupting.
At the end of a winding road, visitors will be surprised that the road
simply quits due to recent lava flows.
You can walk along areas of land that didn’t exist even five years
ago. If you go toward evening, you’ll
begin to see areas of glowing where lava is bubbling out of the ridge next to
the lava field and rangers have a telescope so you can see it up close. They don’t recommend that visitors get close
to the unpredictable lava, nor can one go too close to the ocean shelf as it
has been known to break off unexpectedly. In the end, many guided tours of
Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park will offer you an experience you will never
forget.
You’ll learn a lot about volcanoes and see some amazing
scenery.
