Day 3 Big Island....

Well we headed off after a morning on the water slides to see the Volcano... we were excited to see some real hot lava! On the way our scenery change quite a bit from drab Kona. This is a pic of Waimea, its the "country" side of Hawaii, with real cowboys, and horses & cows! Our poor kids hung in as we made the long drive... 3hrs one way, This was the kids on the way there! The Hilo side proved to be more like Kauai, It does rain more on that side of the island. We reached the end of the road.... we didn't think we could go through because of the sign, but we tried anyways...... Tada.... so apparently there was a big eruption on the Sunday before that took out their old viewing area which got you a lot closer to the ocean, so they had to move everything back 1mile to be safe. So the parking lot of the old area became the new viewing area, and the new parking lot was a mile away from that. So really we didn't get very close to the view.... and we also found out the lava that was flowing very nicely had solidified a day before, so basically no action, just some smoke from the ground, as you will see in the lower pics... At least the kids had fun exploring the old lava flows, and checking out all the cool rocks and shapes it had make! This is the smoke... can you see it??? I know kinda hard, but oh well. more smoke.. More cool rocks throwing and finding all sorts of cool things... this was Ty " mommy look at this cool rock. This one really is kinda cool how the big rocks got pushed up from the hot lava at one point. We thought this was rope, way cool how slow flowing lava can form all different things. Umm yes that is someones house.... and guess what???? You too can have your very own house on 2 acres of lava rock, with a slight chance of your house being swept away by hot flowing lava, because the lava tube could open back up since this volcano is still super active. And guess what I hear you can get it for a really good deal, as long as you pay it in full with cash.... because apparently that banks will not loan you the $$ for it, and you can not get homeowners insurance... hummmm I wonder why??? But guess what??? YOU HAVE AN OCEAN VIEW. And an amazing view every night of the glowing lava, and glowing crater mountain. Soooo what do you say? YoU IN? And this... this would be your backyard! Nothing like sending the kids out to play on nice hard black sharp lava rock! Shay being entertained on our small hike... which we were sad to say we didn't even make it the full way, the kids were done. But Ty found some cool lava caves. hummm mommy what is in there? Even though lava was not flowing, it was still cool to see the miles and miles of black rolling lava rock! The ride home was a little harder... poor Shay finally crashed... And Ty, well lets just say we talked about just everything we thought would entertain the kid, but as you can tell.... He did that himself okay, And then oh no.... hummm, you wonder why he got car sick?? Poor kid at the top of Waimea where its like a nice cold 60 degrees poor kid was freezing as I was hosing him down with water bottles. But it was worth the stop, to see the top of Mauna Kea the "old volcano" (not active) Where you have the clearest view of space, as you can kinda see the many observatories at the top peaking through the clouds. I would love to go look through those tele's some day! More Mauna Kea! All in all we had a wonderful vacation, if only the trip to the volcano's was not 6hrs round trip, and if only Ty didn't get sick, it would have been a wonderfully fun day! Ahh vacations they are so refreshing, you know what I mean? The next morning was early as we headed for the plan at a nice 5:30am!