Our first stop on "the big island", Hawaii, was at Hilo. We were booked on the "Hawaii Volcanos National Park & Waterfall Explorer" excursion, a 7 hour trip. We got on a large shuttle type van. When we were getting on a woman in front of us backed out of the van saying "I am not sitting back there alone." There was a row of 3 seats behind the driver, the seat near the door had to be folded forward for people to get to the back. The woman unfolded the seat and got into the seat furthest from the door then folded the outer seat again. The shuttle had an aisle with 1 seat on one side and 2 seats on the other. Dale got on and found two empty seats together so sat in the seat near the window. Ernie started to sit in the seat next to Dale, a woman was sitting in the single seat across the aisle, when Ernie went to sit down the woman told him she was saving the seat for her husband and put her hand on the seat. Ernie said, "I'm sitting with my wife." and sat down. The woman started ranting about it being her seat, Ernie repeated "I'm sitting with my wife." She continued ranting about wanting to sit with her husband, Ernie said "Then you should have got on with him instead of sneaking past other people in line to get on and hold a seat for someone else.". When she continued to rant Dale tried to reason with her to sit where Dale was sitting and we would move to the seat she was in and the single seat in front of her, Ernie just ignored her ranting. The woman finally got up and went to the driver screaming that Ernie had taken her seat. The driver told her to sit in the two seats that were in the row behind him. The husband of the woman who had sat in the first of the seats behind the driver sat in the shotgun seat next to the driver. At the first stop a woman on the bus tapped Ernie on the shoulder and said "Good for you, she should never have done what she did.". Later in the cruise we were at dinner and one of the couples at the table started talking about this woman that had been causing a fuss on an excursion. It turned out that this couple was the woman sitting behind the driver and whose husband was riding shotgun. She said the woman who was causing the fuss was still ranting about someone taking her seat when we stopped for lunch 3 or 4 hours into the excursion. The thing is that, even though she should not have been saving a seat, if the woman had sat in one of the two seats on one side of the shuttle we would not have sat next to her, but would have sat in the two single seats on the other side of the bus. Anyway, once we were settled in the shuttle we had a great time on the excursion.

Hawaii Volcanos National Park & Waterfall Explorer

We made stops at:
  Akaka Falls
  Rainbow Falls
  Akatsuka Orchid Garden
  Thurston Lava Tube
  Volcanos National Park
There are links to view pictures at each stop or you can view All The Pictures.

Akaka Falls

Our first stop was at Akaka Falls State Park. Water coming over Akaka Falls drops 422 feet, further than Niagara Falls. There are several smaller falls near the trail to Akaka Falls and a lot of pretty vegetation along the trail. Akaka in the Hawaiian language means "A rent, split, chink, separation; to crack, split, scale". (Pictures)

Rainbow Falls

Next we went to Rainbow Falls. Rainbow Falls derives its name from the fact that, on sunny mornings around 10AM, rainbows can be seen in the mist thrown up by the waterfall, it was raining on the day we took the excursion so we did not see the rainbows. In the Hawaiian language Rainbow Falls name is Waiānuenue, literally "rainbow water". (Pictures)

Akatsuka Orchid Garden

We stopped at a resort to pick up lunch, then went to Akatsuka Orchid Garden to eat lunch and enjoy looking at the flowers. There is a huge building displaying thousands of plants and flowers, one section of the building has tables and chairs where lunch was set up. They had sandwiches, a large variety of chips, canned drinks, and snack bars. When Ernie saw it he thought, hopefully they have more than one sandwich per person, but one sandwich with a bag of chips, can of soda, and snack bar was more than enough to keep us filled the rest of the day. Since it was raining we did not go outside, but there was so much to see inside we probably did not see it all. Of course Dale took a lot of pictures. (Pictures)

Thurston Lava Tube

We visited the Thurston Lava Tube which is big enough for anyone to walk through upright. We had seen and been into lava tubes elsewhere, but not big enough for us to go all the way through. It had been raining for several days, so water had built up on the ground above the tube. Since lava rock is porous, water was seeping through the lava rock and it was actually "raining" harder in the tube than outside. Most people went a little ways into the tube then turned back when they reached the large puddle in the tube. Ernie was wearing hiking boots so he went through the puddle to the other end of the tube. At the far end were stairs that led to the top of the trail we had taken to the tube. Realizing Dale had not come through the tube, Ernie retraced his steps through the tube and caught up with Dale going back on the trail. (Pictures)

Volcanos National Park

On our way to the visitor center of Volcanos National Park, we stopped at a location where we could view Kīlauea Iki which is a pit crater next to the main summit caldera of Kīlauea. The crater was 800 ft deep when in 1959 a series of 17 episodes spilled molten rock into the crater creating a 400 ft deep lake of lava. The lava cooled and hardened, so today the crater is only 400 ft deep. While at this site we walked a short way along a trail into a rain forest, the bus driver/tour guide told us about much of the vegetation growing there, of course we do not remember much.

We continued on to the visitor center area of the park. We took some pictures of the caldera of Kīlauea. Seeing most people going toward the visitor center to view the caldera we decided to first go the other way. After taking pictures in that area we walked to the visitor center and went out to a view point near it. It looked like we were pretty much seeing the same thing, so we went into the center and checked out some of the displays. We found out later that if we had gone to the furthest away point of the lookout area by the center we could have seen the glow from the lava lake in the caldera, we did not get to see it, but were told that because of the rain we did not miss that much. We got to check off a National Park on our visited list that we were not sure we would ever get to. (Pictures)

One thing we did learn that is important, volcanic gases are very toxic, but steam, though if really hot can burn, is harmless. At one point we stopped at a spot where steam was rising and some people, including Ernie, got out and let it rise about them. It was very warm but not hot enough to burn.

Last updated:   feb 20 2018