We woke up pretty early (jet lag), and made some breakfast. We were in Volcano National Park by 9am in time to hear Ranger Rick tell us all about the places to stop. We met Range John who takes groups down on a 2.7 mile hike to crater floor, but we were concerned visibility would be We stopped at the steam vents, got on our ponchos, and went out. We stopped at a few other points along the way but could not see much of the crater floor area. We decided to head down crater chain drive. We stopped and went into a LAVA tube, some large puddles and some wet feet, the lighting inside made it look orange like LAVA but it was just lighting. We then drove down crater chain drive to the end to see the see arches. At this point the rain was coming down pretty hard, we got pretty wet heading out to the sea arches but they were really cool. We walked back and drove up to the petroglyphs to make 0.7 mile hike. When we started it was. Not raining but by the time we got back we were wet again. We kind of missed the trail it was so windy and we didn’t realize that the trail was marked with piles of stones. Eventually we found the trail again and the petroglyphs. The trail back was much easier. We ate our lunches in the car and then made our way back to the cabin. We decided to go to an Astronomy Museum in Hilo. While at the museum we saw a presentation on black holes, Desi said it was “heavy”. We wandered around the museum learning about the history of the island and how the islanders use the start for sea faring and that for several hundred years from the time the people made it to the islands to the 1970’s the stopped open sea travel, until islanders decided to teach themselves again. They make canoes out of the local trees. From there we went to Kuhio Grille. We tried Kalua Pig, LauLau, Poi, and some other local delicacies. Ellie had mac and cheese. We made a stop for some birthday confections in the form of cupcakes. We went back to the cabin to enjoy them and watch a little miss marvel.

Tomorrow Volcano National Park in the day and maybe some beaches in Hilo.