Category: United States

As I mentioned before, the Big Island of Hawaii holds a few distinctions. Not only does it have the wettest city in the U.S. (Hilo), it also has the southernmost town in the U.S. (where I’m posting this blog entry: Naalehu), and the biggest mountain in the world (if you consider the fact that, unlike Mount Everest, it starts on the floor of the ocean).

I spent the past few days camping and hiking on this world’s largest mountain while visiting Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The park is a pretty amazing place with huge extremes in climate, elevation, and environments. The park runs from sea level up to a 13,700-foot peak covered in snow. There are about 150 miles of hiking trails throughout the park (including the summit trail), but it is best known for its very active volcanoes and lava flows.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is the place you hear about lava flows in Hawaii, which crop up on the news every so often because they happen so frequently. The Big Island of Hawaii is the youngest of the Hawaiian Islands and continues to grow due to frequent volcanic eruptions. There are probably 15 or 20 active volcanic craters in the park, many of which have spewed lava in recent years. Throughout the park, there are huge hardened (cooled) lava flows that were making their way down to the sea before they froze into rock. You occasionally come to these clearings in the tropical growth along the road, where you’ll find nothing but black, hardened lava on either side. Signs are posted next to these flows indicating the years the lava flowed: 1959, 1974, 1982, 1998, 2002, 2003.

You can still see live (hot) lava flows in some parts of the park, which glow bright red at night. In other parts of the park, you can hike across craters that were last active in 1959 but continue to smell of sulphur as they steam off the rainwater that falls down into their cracks. They say these craters are much like frozen lakes, except instead of ice you walk on a relatively thin crust of rock. Instead of there being water below, you’re walking over magma — just a few hundred feet down. All of these active craters could wake up and erupt more lava at any time, but they seem better positioned to predict eruptions these days by closely monitoring seismic activity in the area.

Throughout the park, there were warnings about frequent earthquakes and fault lines opening up. There were also warnings about tidal waves, saying you should run from the ocean to higher ground if there are any earthquakes. Lava flows, earthquakes, and tidal waves have wiped out entire towns on this island in just the last century.

What an exciting place!

After a few days in overpopulated Oahu (which is the home of Honolulu), I hopped on my long-planned flight to Hilo (pronounced Heel-o) on the island of Hawaii. As in New York State, people have to make the distinction between the state and the island, so they refer to the island of Hawaii as “The Big Island” (as opposed to the State of Hawaii — of which it’s part). Hilo holds the distinction of being America’s wettest city, getting about 6 meters of rain a year. Fortunately, the Big Island, roughly the size of Connecticut, is large enough that different parts of the state have distinct climates.

I spent my first couple of days roaming around the tiny city of Hilo (albeit the biggest on this island) just trying to get supplies. Hilo is probably not much bigger than Lititz or Manheim, PA (50,000?). And unfortunately, they have a Walmart. This means the city isn’t big enough to support both Walmart and small-shop owners, who are far more likely to be experts in their fields. The minimum wage paid to Walmart staff, as usual, meant they didn’t know anything about what they were selling. I also ran into this problem with K-Mart in some small Australian cities.

Getting used to shopping in American supermarkets again was another headache. Healthy food was awfully hard to find, with double-sugar here and triple-sized items there. Needless to say, this severely complicated my ability to get healthy, non-perishable camping food, camping fuel (I had to figure out what Australian “Methylated Spirits” translates to around here), and to get some basic, easy photo needs met (which were over the heads of Walmart employees).

After about 24 hours of aggravation, I finally got out of Hilo and started heading down the west coast. The area, known as Puna, is famous for its hippies (or ferals, as we call them in Australia), rainforests, spectacular coasts, and volcanic remnants (including cool casts of trees caught in the lava). I found a hostel in the area with a very eccentric manager and lots of empty rooms. This seems like a really good time to visit Hawaii!