Exploring Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (Our 20th National Park!) | Big Island Day 5

Good morning from our 20th National Park, Hawaii Volcanoes. We're in the 20s. Hawaii Volcanoes is one of two national parks in the state of Hawaii, the other being Haleakala, which is on Maui, and this national park is home to two of the world's most active volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Kilauea. So last year in 2018, Kilauea erupted, which you may have seen in the news. This caused a lot of changes in the surrounding areas as well as in the park. Over 700 homes in southeastern Hawaii were destroyed, as well as the Kilauea crater collapsed and there were tens of thousands of earthquakes. So there have been a lot of changes in the park, so if you have visited before things may look a little bit different and for those of you who haven't, you may be envisioning lava flowing, lava glows, lots of lava, but there's no active lava flows or lava glow right now. So you will not be seeing any active lava today, but there's still a lot of really neat things to see in the park and we're excited to check it out. Our first stop at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is the Kilauea Iki Trail, which we hear is one of the most popular things to do in the park. It is a four mile round trip trail. It takes you 400 feet down into the Kilauea Iki crater and then back up. And we read on the sign at the trailhead that it erupted in 1959 and it erupted for 36 days and it took 36 years for it to harden and when you're walking on it apparently you can still feel the heat coming off of it. Which is nice because it's a little chilly out and it's raining. So apparently the eruption in 1959 was a series of 17 eruptions or events, some lasting from a day long to a week long. Can you imagine like a week of like lava just flowing out? That's crazy. And so it created this lava lake that's 400 feet deep and that is what we'll be walking on. We're about to enter the crater. So we said earlier that you can feel the heat down here we read but I don't really feel it. Do you? I don't really either. I mean it's getting warmer out. This time it's coming out more. We have jackets on. We've been hiking and moving. But I don't think it's from this. I don't know. I feel the heat now. There's a little bit of a steam vent. Yeah. Cool. They say when it rains the water goes down and then it heats up and then it becomes a steam vent. Oh okay. This is actually warm. Yeah. I mean warmer than the other thing I found. Yeah there it comes. Here comes a unexpected thing about this park that we really like is there's no one else out here but us. Really we've only seen what two other groups of people. Yeah just a couple others. And we read last night that for this trail specifically like to get here like with the latest nine or ten because the parking lot fills up and it's just crazy busy but not today. It's the week before Thanksgiving so maybe everyone's coming next week. It's a Wednesday which I mean I guess it doesn't really matter on vacation but I don't know. We really like it. We like when there are no people. Not complaining. So after our hike we swung by the visitor center and we had perfect timing because we caught like the I guess probably like the second half of the ranger giving his like program talk about the park and man he like dropped some knowledge bombs on us. It was the one of the most interesting things I have ever listened to. We normally don't stand and listen to those. We walked up and we just were hooked. I think we stood there for at least 20 minutes. Yeah. He was so engaging and funny and knowledgeable. Yeah. He like laid all these facts out and was like oh man I'm gonna say that one. I'm gonna say this one. I can't even remember. Yeah we can't remember any of it. Mind blown but I mean. Well we can't remember specifics to say it was just so much we can barely we can't summarize what he said but. He was just yeah talking about all the activity of the volcanoes and really detailed like last year's eruption and really just like hammered home that like this is the most active volcano in the world. So he had this one of those like topographical 3D maps. Yeah that you see at all the National Park. Yeah showing photos so if you come to this National Park definitely stand around and listen to this. It was so so interesting and I wish we could give more detail but we just it was just too much information. Yeah I mean he was like really passionate about it because he he was like if I worked at the Grand Canyon it would be cool but I would have to say the same things every time every program but like he said working here is so awesome because it changes every year and just all the activity that happens. Yeah it's just some always something new. Yeah so this it made me even more excited to explore more of this park and he gave us some tips on where to go so we're going to go there in a second but per our tradition we had to go get our park patch which we'll put back up in the van once we get back to the van although we aren't traveling here in the van we'll still put it in the van and then we got postcards which is a new tradition however we got our first patron yesterday Richard. Thank you Richard. So awesome. So awesome. Thank you. So Richard's going to get a postcard sent to him so Richard this is coming for you very soon. It's coming for you. Spoiler alert. One of the things that the ranger recommended doing at the park today is driving on crater rim drive you used to be able to drive on a lot more of it but unfortunately due to last year's activity most of it's closed down now but there is one park where you can park your car and then you can walk one mile on the road it's only open to feet and bicycles and you'll get a really cool view of the crater. It's starting to rain on us but this road was really neat to walk on you got to see some earthquake damage which was terrifying but also really interesting to see then you also get a better look into the crater. Hardly anyone's out here. Yay rain. Up next we're going to drive down chain of craters road to the ocean. We're about to drive down so one thing we didn't mention is this park is at think of elevation so on this drive you're going down three thousand four down there. Came to at the end of the road. So we have officially left the national park because there are a couple places we wanted to see that were just outside so we drove 30 minutes southwest to Puna Lu'u Beach Park which is a black sand beach. So this isn't the first black sand beach that we've seen on this trip we hiked down to one with our friend Bucky the other day but this is the first one that you actually can just drive up to park walk out to you can lay out here if you'd like. They have a million palm trees which the other ones didn't have so it's very tropical feeling. I love the palm trees but I think what I love even more is that this beach is known for having turtles. Yeah it's awesome we we parked walked out and then we saw these orange cones like hey something's going on over there so we walked up and there's a turtle right there. A big one too he's been napping for a while but he moved a little bit and he's kind of opening his eyes to see everyone staring at him. Don't worry the very close-up shots that you saw were with our zoomed in lens we did not get that close to the turtle but I don't know that was an unexpected surprise I kind of forgot about that until we actually saw him. Yeah I feel like we've gotten really lucky with the wildlife on this trip we've seen which we didn't know about this one was mongoose. Yeah. Looked like a little squirrel. Like a ferret kind of thing. Yeah that was cool and then it's been really easy we've seen two turtles within yeah seconds of walking up. Yeah. Really easy. Awesome. We can't see him right now but I just saw another turtle I think he might be swimming to shore to hang out with his buddy. Cool. I love this place. Oh also I mean it was kind of a planned thing but the manta rays like. Yeah we saw so many manta rays. Yeah I mean especially on the trip like the two nights before they only had one there I think. Yeah. The night before they had nine but ours. It really varies so. Yeah. Cool. There he is oh come on buddy pop We just found four more turtles including one that just pulled himself up on the beach and he's like sliding on up. All right we're ending our day in the best way we know how with ice cream. This is actually vegan gelato. Oh man it looks so good. So we're at a place called Mikoko which is a vegan gelato place in Hilo. They also have another location about 30 minutes or so away from here and they had I don't know like eight ten flavors or so to choose from. I think ten yeah. I think it's all local ingredients. Gluten-free. Yeah. Organic. All the good all the good things. All the good stuff. So I got golden mac nut and then pumpkin bourbon. I got like a chocolate that's made with local chocolate apparently just across the street and the other one is I don't remember. It's a walnut one. Oh maple walnut there it is. And the best part though is we asked for cones and she made the cones right there so they are warm and they're fresh to death. Yeah. That's good. That's really creamy and good. I just took one of my first bites of the cone and it's so crunchy and crispy and good. Oh it's thin and crispy. Oh it's so good and the ice cream is kind of oozing through it because it's really thin. Also the ice cream is so so creamy. Yeah. And it kind of has like a thickness to it that vegan ice cream doesn't always have and I don't really taste any coconut or any alternative milks right. It's just I would I seriously would never know. Yeah you'd think there was like egg or something in there. It's like tastes it feels eggy. Yeah it's so good. All right we made it back to our Airbnb for the night. One thing we didn't get to do because we had too much fun at the National Park today was go to it's a beach called Isaac Hale Beach and it's the newest beach in the Pacific. That's newest not nudist so please bring a swimsuit but if you come here you should definitely go check it out. So the ranger at the National Park told us about it from the lava flow last year it created this beach so it's not like the sandiest of beaches but if you want to check out something that's new to the island and part of the history of the volcano go check it out. But tomorrow is our last day on the big island and we're so bummed but we have until 11 p.m when our flight leaves so we have all day so it's gonna be a full day still. We're gonna check out a different colored beach. We're gonna eat more food. We're gonna go on a coffee tour. I'm really excited. It should be a really fun last day. Good morning from our 20th National Park. We're in the 20th. Oh sorry. Ow I hit my elbow. Take 70. I just took one of my first bites of the comb and it's...did I say cone or comb? I don't know what I said. Rainbow of fire. You know that would warrant it. Maybe if it earned some money Tom. Dad do you want to take over our channel?