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Picking up the oft-delayed vacation photos series, here’s the first half of our trip out to Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park and the volcano Kilauea.

Kilauea is often referred to as the most active volcano in the world. To give you an idea why, its latest eruption started in 1983… and is still going!

We got to the park fairly late in the day, partly because we underestimated the amount of time it would take to drive there from Kailua, and partly because we stopped at various points of interest along the way. It was mid-afternoon by the time we got to the visitor’s center, where Katie stood transfixed by the lava videos and I checked out the maps.

We stopped for a late lunch at Volcano House, an old hotel built on the edge of the Kilauea Caldera. Check out the view!

Wide flat area with cliffs rising to the right, treetops in the foreground.

The crater Halema‘uma‘u, which contained a boiling lava lake from 1823–1924, is visible near the center. The southern slope of Mauna Loa rises in the background. The whole caldera is roughly elliptical in shape, and Volcano House is one end of the longer axis. I don’t remember exactly how far it is from one side to the other, but judging by the map I’d say it’s about 2×3 miles.

Off to the right, behind a tree in the panorama, are the steaming bluffs. Groundwater gets heated by the magma below the volcano and seeps out through cracks all over the caldera.
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Amid the old lava flows on the west coast of Hawai‘i, locals have a tradition of arranging coral on the jumbled rocks to create temporary graffiti. It tends to be “friendly” graffiti, more like carving one’s initials in a tree than tagging a freeway wall with spray paint.

Random Grafitti in Coral on Lava

We drove past a beautifully drawn whale several times before we finally decided to stop by the side of the road, and Katie stepped out to get a picture:
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Up at the visitor’s center for the Mauna Kea observatories, there’s a sign that says, “Beware of Invisible Cows.” It was dark when we were there, and I tried to get this picture without using the flash since there were people with portable telescopes ten feet away, so it’s really blurry:

The actual invisible cows sign (blurry)

Fortunately someone in charge recognized the humor value, and the visitor’s center sells bumper stickers:

Beware of Invisible Cows
Why invisible cows? It's dark and foggy.

Of course, it turns out other people, visiting during the day, have snapped better pictures of the sign.

Update 2025: They still sell stickers, magnets and T-shirts featuring the warning! The T-shirts are printed with the words, but not the cows, in glow-in-the-dark ink, so at night, the cows are in fact invisible. I’m tempted…

Note: Our visit to Mauna Kea was on Saturday, April 9, 2005.