May in Hawai'i: the Volcano, snorkeling, swimming with turtles, and kayaking near and swimming with dolphin in the open ocean!

On our trip to the Big Island this year we invited Jim Reece (Bill's early growing-up next door neighbor) and wife Pat Hine to join us.  They live in Moscow, Idaho and have never been to Hawaii.  They accepted and so we met at the Kona Airport then headed to the Kilauea Volcano. We rented a comfortable house in the village of Volcano and spent several days exploring and hiking in and around the Volcano.

Hawai'i's Kilauea Volcano is the world's most active volcano. It is part of the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park. Laura and I visited here in 2008 shortly after this vent blew open in the side of the Halema'uma'a Crater, which is part of the Kilauea Caldera. The entire area is surrounded by other craters, steam vents, sulphur banks, beautiful fern tree forests, lava tubes, and a myriad of lava formations from previous volcanic activity. The current, on-going lava flows are not accessible at this time, so we could not witness the growing of the island as the lava flows into the ocean and continues to form new real estate. Anyone for an ocean view lot? (As soon as the lava cools down.)


This year the vent had changed location and size. Currently the opening is in the floor of the Halema'uma'u Crater and is approximately 500-feet in diameter. The lava is still well below the surface of the Crater, but the glow at night is absolutely breath-taking! We began to wonder why we were standing half mile from the world's most active volcano, watching the pulsing glow of the molten lava in the crater! Are we crazy??


We then drove to the Kailua-Kona area for the next 9 days of fun and adventures.  The following pages provide a quick overview of some of the great times we enjoyed.  (The short video clips are safe to open as I created them.)