Day 5 - More Lava Tubes and Waterfalls, Real Lava and Volcanoes

We spent the night in a little B&B in Hilo, and spent the next morning exploring the beach at the end of the road.  

(The white dots on the top of the mountain are the giant telescopes above the observatory we went to the night before.)

Then off to another lava tube, this one much bigger than the one from yesterday.  

We grabbed our flashlights and headed into the dark to explore.  

The lava looked like chocolate in places.

Our next stop was rainbow falls.  It was cloudy when we were there, so we didn't get to see the rainbow, but it was pretty nonetheless.  

Then off to what we hoped would be the highlight of the whole trip: seeing real lava!  Sadly, when we got there we were told that today we'd only get to see fumes.  We were all bummed.

 (Houses that have been rebuilt right on the lava after having been destroyed back in the '90s or so.)

 The long awaited, somewhat disappointing lava fumes.

Next stop, Hawaii Volcano National Park!  This park was amazingly cool.  So many fun hikes and things to see.

Getting warm at the steam vents.

The sulpher banks.

We had a ghetto fabulous car with interior party lighting!  You could change the color too.  We couldn't get a good picture of it in the dark, but we had to document it anyway.

We made sure to go see the volcano caldera after dark because you could see the lava glowing from way down in the pit.  Again, we couldn't get a good picture of it, but it was pretty amazing.