Travel Tuesday: Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park day 2, April 18, 2025

Up early after a surprisingly great night's sleep in our little cabin. We drove back to the crater rim and went to hike the Kilauea Iki Trail. 

As we started down to the crater floor and this handsome fella -- a kalij pheasant -- put on a little show for us: 

Apparently they're native to the foothills of the Himalayas, but a group of 67 was introduced to the Big Island in 1962 as game birds. Because they have no major natural predators on the islands, their population exploded and now they're a very common sight in the park.

But even he had a hard time competing with the lush greenery. Those giant ferns felt very prehistoric! 

I am a rule follower by nature, but these signs still made me laugh because IT'S A FREAKING VOLCANO. DON'T BE STUPID!

Once on the crater floor there were cairns, but there was a faint but obvious trace of a trail. 

It felt lunar and very quiet (we only saw 2 other people until we were climbing up the far side of the crater) and very open. I loved the bright green plants growing whenever they were able to establish themselves. 

We occasionally saw some offerings, too. 

The crater floor was pretty even, but you could see areas where the lava cooled differently:

Back at the top the trail followed the rim back to the start....

... and it provided spots to take silly photos: 

It was cool to see the trail across the crater from the far side: 

I love this AllTrails map of our hike: 

Because we finished our hike so early, we decided to drive over to Hilo to look around. We went to a very cool and very busy farmer's market, had veggie moko loco, 

met a very cool artist named Shane Molina and bought a bunch of stickers, and had tofu musubi in an amazingly named and logoed restaurant called MUSUBEAST. (Seriously, they need to sell merch!)

We even managed to finish the visit with the absolute best shave ice I have ever had. 

In the afternoon we headed back to the park and saw a few more spots. I loved the steam vents because all the heat and moisture made the vegetation really lush. 

We also walked around to a different view of the eruption site: 

In the evening we went back to the crater rim and watched the eruption in a quiet spot in the dark... admittedly wishing we would have MORE of an eruption!

Finally, when it was pitch black, we walked back to our campground. Some families had LOTS of people at their campsites -- there were 15 people at the cabin across the road, and at least 20 people at the cabin on the other side of the shower block. But luckily they all had little kids with them and were quiet at 10pm!

In the morning we packed up and started to make our way back to Kona via Hilo -- our last day in Hawaii!

Travel Tuesday is a project to get my memories out of my notebooks and off my phone.