Volcano

Volcano was pretty much a wash out. It was driving rain the entire time. We have some cool pictures of lava flows and the lava tube we walked through, but they're on the other camera, so you'll have to wait. Once again, we couldn't get right up to where the lava was flowing, so we had to content ourselves with distant pictures of steam rising from where it was flowing into the sea. We couldn't get closer. The rangers said something about "unstable lava benches" bah.

We walked through an old lava tube while we were there. That was really cool. It was 1000 feet in complete darkness. We brought good flashlights, but at the end of the tube you literally could see nothing. Not your hand in front of your face. And your eyes never adjusted. It was pretty cool to see how lava reaches distant parts of the island.

Since it was monsooning, we headed back to Hilo and stopped at this botanical garden. Seriously amazing vegatation. Here's Ryan next to the biggest tree I'd ever seen. There were flowers that looks like they would eat you and some of the coolest looking vegatation I've ever seen.