Volcano National Park: Day 2

This day was my favorite day. We went on our longest hike but we saw some pretty awesome things.

We got up at 6am in the freezing and pouring rain to hike up to Pu'u huluhulu, Mauna Ulu and Mauna loa volcano craters.

We started out hiking to Pu'u huluhulu. I actually didn't get a picture of that crater because by the time we got to it, it was raining so hard that I was too afraid that my camera would get wet.

But the actual hike there had some really cool volcanic structures and formations from pahoehoe lava flows that erupted from Mauna Ulu.

Cupcake?

I'll have you know Jen and I became experts at building these things. Experts.

Today was tree mold day. We saw tons and tons of tree molds. This happens when the lava forms around the tree, killing the tree but leaving a deep hole etched with bark patterns. Whenever our professor pointed to a lava formation and asked us what it was, you had an 80% chance of getting it right if you said a tree mold or lava tree.

Tree molds:

Kari at the end of a tree mold:

Lava trees:

This incredibly awkward picture makes me laugh. I was standing on a tiny lava bridge that was really unstable to see if it would hold me. Someone was taking a picture of me when I made a random last minute decision to jump off of it. As I was jumping off, the bridge collapsed under me and I fell and did a crazy tuck-and-roll sort of move right into the sharp volcanic rock. It was actually pretty hilarious--and I have the giant cuts on my legs to prove it! This picture just reminds me that I'm an idiot.

The hike to Mauna Ulu was just straight over volcanic rock. It was pretty freaky because you could feel the hollow tubes underneath. We were all freaked out that it would crack and we would fall in because some parts were so thin!

The top of the Mauna Ulu crater was sweet. It was kind of scary....the top seemed so unstable. One wrong step and you were plummeting to the bottom of a hot volcano. Lots of steam and sulfuric gas was coming up---it was SO hot up there!

After we finished this hike, we drove straight to another volcano: Mauna loa.

I only took one picture of this hike because at this point, I was on the verge of hypothermia and my hands and fingers couldn't move to get out my camera.

Who knew our longest and coldest day would end up being my favorite?

Once again, we spent the night laughing and talking about how offensive it is to people when you cut someone off and then throw your arms up in the air...and then just laughing because we were too tired to make any sense. And then we almost died laughing because one of our professors accidently brought his wife's sweatshirt that said "Number one Grandma" and was too cold to care.

I finally fell asleep watching Wall-E on Kari's iTouch, and then seriously felt like I woke up 2 hours later for day #3.

Day #3 hikes will be posted tomorrow!

Oh my!

What a face!!

Only 4 more weeks until I get to see my favorite ugly face!

Volcano National Park: Day 1

Well I survived the trip! It was pretty rough. I'm glad that I had friends on the trip to balance out the craziness. The main thing that I learned during this trip was that the professors that took us were freakin' hard core!

So here's the gist of day one:

We ended up getting to BYUH at 3am Thursday morning, and getting on our flight at 4:45am. We drove straight to the Volcano National Park when we got there, and got out to hike immediately! No on had any food or water or even the right clothes, because we all thought we were heading to our cabins first to drop off our stuff.......uh...nope! An 8 mile hike first. Like I said....hard core.

Did I mention that there was a giant storm over the Big Island this weekend? That didn't stop us either! Into the storm we went. All of my pictures are pretty grayish and rainy. Like this one. I didn't want to get out of the car, so I took a picture instead.

The first place we hiked was through the Thurston lava tube near Kilauea. It was pretty domestic, and lights installed to light the path, but was still pretty cool. We learned a whoooooolllleeee lot about lava formations and how lava tubes are formed.

We also headed down into the crater of Kilauea Iki, which had its last eruption in 1959.

Everything was so gray and desolate, it looked like we were hiking the trail to Mordor.

You could see the steam coming from the magma underground through various cracks and fissures. It was sooooo warm we just wanted to camp out there next to one.

We saw a lot of sweet lava formations, mainly made from A'a and pahoehoe lava flows.

This is a view of the crater we hiked through from the top. You can see the steam and sulfuric gas rising from Kilauea in the background.

This is Jen and I freezing to death at the top of the Pauahi crater:

This is the geologist that came with us. He taught us alllllll of the geology about the places that we went to. We all had to take notes because there was a test on the last day. I thought this picture was funny because he looks like he's casting a spell. This guy is incredibly hard core. He did all of the intense hikes with us and he is 74 years old!

After Kilauea Iki, we headed up to Kilauea (Still hungry, still in the rain...). It was too rainy to see much, so this is the best shot I got.

We couldn't hike any closer because of the sulfuric gas that was rising out (as you can see in the picture). I'm sure if it were up to our professors we would have gone anyway and took the chance. Thank goodness for the park rangers!

After the long day we stopped at this local place called the Lava Rock Cafe and I had the best Philly cheesestake sandwich of my life. I don't know whether the sandwich was actually good or I was just so hungry and nutrient deprived that anything I ate tasted like heaven. A rock would have probably tasted just as good. Either way I felt a lot better after eating it.

We finally stopped off at our cabins at the end of the day and they actually turned out to be pretty nice! I didn't get any pictures of it--probably because I immediately cocooned myself in all of the warm clothes and blankets I could find and just stayed there until the next morning! My friends and I got to room together, which was a total blast because we just ended up laughing and talking...but that ended up hurting us in the end when we had to get up at 6am to go hike again.

I'll save day two for tomorrow. So much to blog about!

Pillbox, a wild pig, and a 3-day trek.

Last week Seth and I hiked up to the pillboxes in Lanikai. We do this hike a lot because it is so easy and has such a gorgeous view. Take a look:

''

If you look closely, you can see Seth on the hill off to the right.

There were these three guys that were up there flying RC gliders. It was pretty cool to watch and they were more than happy to tell us all about them. They were saying that they like to have glider flights in the air! Way cool. I think my dad would die to go hang out with them.

On another note, I had a particularly eventful day today. I was working in the science stockroom today in the McKay buildings, and when I was walking out the door to move some boxes, a wild pig ran right in front of me........yes.... a WILD PIG!!

I was so freaked out that I just froze. That has to be one of the most random things that I have ever seen. Anyway, so I was the only one around at the time. The pig ran into the bushes outside of one of the classrooms, so I followed it to see what it was doing. It was just lying in the bushes. I saw one of my friends walking by so I called her over and we just stared at this pig just chilling! I snapped a quick picture with my phone, which I wish I could figure out how to download onto here. So anyway, we called a couple of professors over, and they just ended up scaring the pig to run further into the McKay buildings and freak out a few more students and then ran towards the Hales. One guy kept asking who had rope---he wanted to catch it to eat! Ok, so being a pre-vet student, I had to stop that so I lied and told him we didn't have any rope in the stockroom.... :). I wonder if he was really serious.

I hope the pig got away safely.

So random.

And the last thing ....I'm heading off to the big island tomorrow night for a 3-day trek with my BIO204 class. We're studying the geology at the Volcano National Park and we're supposed to be hiking around 18 miles a day. Its supposed to storm over there all week, so this could end up being a very very very very long weekend. We will see! I hope the weather is good.

Peace out!

Voila.

My cupcake masterpiece.

Pleasing to the eye AND the stomach.

Happy Birthday Ashley!