Saturday July 16, 2011

First stop of the day was too be the southernmost person in the USA. I think I accomplished it. I was on the southern tip of the southermost island in the Hawaiian chain. The first photo is me trying to get as far south as I could just to make sure.

Volcanoes National Park

Eh….it was only ok. This park is the place that you see on TV with the lava flowing all over the place even into the ocean. The lava had been flowing for 20 years or so………until 3 months ago. Basically all you could see was a giant smoking crater and acres more of the old black lava (which I saw back at the airport). Took a drive down this road to the ocean to see the spot where the lava had crossed the road and entered the ocean……boring. I was pretty bummed because I really wanted to see the flowing lava spectacle that you've all seen on TV.

The highlight of the day was staying after dark to see the crater glowing red and belching smoke into the sky at night. The red glow was obvious at night and created quite a spectacle. All in all though, Volcanoes National Park was a bust.

Let's talk about the National Parks a little. There are many reasons to visit our National Parks….one reason people want to visit a park is the “danger” that lurks there. You are supposed to fear the bear, or the dangerous canyon, or the flowing molten lava….and you should. It’s a good reason to visit many of the parks and the park system takes full advantage of this as a selling point, and so they should. The gift shop is full of stuff like books on the perilous deaths in the park, pictures of bears growling, even bear spray should you be attacked. The reality is….while they hype the “danger”, if your not a total idiot, its nearly impossible to get into any actual danger. They close roads, or entire areas if there a bear around or there’s some noxious volcanic gasses, they have secure barriers to prevent you from getting “too close” to things, and the endless signage and warnings are all about safety.

It’s like they play both sides of the coin……you could get eaten by a mountain lion or at least see the dangerous beast……but please stay on the tour bus or on the marked path. Maybe I’m thinking too much into this…..

Ended up the night in Hilo…..As you know, I always try to get as close to the people that actually live in the place I’m visiting. When driving at night I have a rule that I stop at every outdoor event that has floodlights on it. Tonight I ended up walking three laps in the local Relay for Life cancer walk. Obviously there were no tourists there and you could get a great feel for the native population. There seems to be many similarities between Alaskan’s and Hawaiians. If they don’t go to college, they end up stuck. Don’t get me wrong, stuck is not necessarily a bad thing. Especially if you live in Hawaii, but you’ll most likely end up doing some crappy tourism job and struggle with money the rest of your life. There’s definitely a huge meth problem here and teen pregnancy is a huge issue. The kids have grown up in a family system where education is not a high priority, and few end up graduating college. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying any of this is really horrible, it’s just different back home. I will say this, that Hawaiian people are among the friendliest people I’ve ever met. They are perpetually happy and are comfortable with their lives, which to me, don’t appear to be that uncomfortable……and there’s certainly something to be said for that.

The hotel room that night was the grossest ever, it had four twin beds (take your pick), and looked like it hadn’t had a good scrub down since back in the late 70’s. Eh…..whatever.