Hawaii - Day 6

Thursday - We are winding down our week.  Speaking of winding...

We A-G-A-I-N traveled long winding SLOW roads. You sure wouldn't want to get anywhere fast on this island as it would be impossible.  We ended up circling the entire island this day.  We started out from our condo heading south. At the southern tip of the island we hit the Black Sand Beach Park.  The kids are so good about taking photos of the signs where we stopped. I never thought to do this but makes a LOT of sense when sorting through thousands of photos to help remember where you were when. KUDOS to the kids!

This is the only close-up shot I had of the black sand. It is blurry but Vern's hand holding the sand. It was illegal to take any of the sand as it errodes quickly and eventually there will be no black sand beach.

Here we have a unique self portrait of Vern kissing 'you'.

Finally, here is a shot of the beach. As you can see (look at trees), the wind is blowing like crazy.

Next we were off to Volcanos National Park. This is where the active volcano is on the Big Island.  There were just steam plumes as evidenced by the photo below.  The plumes contained sulfuric acid and boy it was hard on my lungs.  Part of the road around the crater has been closed for years as the plumes blow that direction a lot. If you inhale to much of this stuff it will kill you. There are warnings all over the place.  In the visitors center there were also a lot of seismographs to show all the earthquake activity. Luckily I didn't feel any or I would have freaked out!

Here is a photo of the family at the Thurson Lava tubes. This is a cave that once was a lava tube flowing a LOT of molten rock. It was HUGE inside.

Next we have Vern being silly. He wasn't listening (hmmmm not unusual...) so we started to take off without him.  He thought he would run and jump on the hood and ride that way. He wasn't going to be left there. What a goof!

This next shot is looking down upon one of the lava flows from the past. I can't remember why I included this shot in the blog but it is still a nice shot.

This next shot makes me laugh every time I see it.  If you know me at all you will appreciate this photo. It is me waiting to get into the bathroom!  Come on after all that wine tasting I had to go!!!!  Yes, we did purchase a bottle of wine and brought it home with us.

Here is Vern and myself relaxing on our balcony. It was so nice to be in a climate were I wasn't boiling hot or freezing cold no matter where we went. I hope heaven is just like this and I make it there. :-)

And to finish off Day 6, a flower photo. You were always surrounded by such beauty that it was hard not to take pictures of everything and anything.