Another day at the Volcano. Another hike over the lava fields, this time the Naulu trail.
We had to wait to fill out the paperwork, the office opened at 9am. We passed the time at the Thurston lava tube, an easy 1/2-1 mile walk to and through a lava tube. We had seen it before but today we were so early that we were the only one's on the trail. It was a great expierence.
After that little warm-up the office was open to fill out the paperwork. The ranger thankfully told me that sneakers would be ok on the trail, in fact the are sometimes better then hiking boots. My blistered heals thanked her!
On the way down we were greated with this:
Needless to say we had to drive half way back up to get cell service to make sure it was safe to go hiking. It was, the sign was from last week.
The hike itself was neat because it was over both a-a and pahoe-hoe lavas. The a-a seemed like it would be slightly harder to get through. It was so much easier because the path showing us the way was much clearer. We even got to see the old chain of craters road. it was so strange turning the corner and popping out onto what was left of a road!
The forest of this portion was much wetter then yesterday. We were disapointed in the end, unable to see the feature we wanted to see. At this point I was nervous to go any further (as we did not know how fat it would be) and I was soked. We turned around and marched back through the forest. (It was a nother half mile to the Right, Pat of course wanted to go left so I'm glad we turned around).
I was happy once we got out of the forest to change into my very dry shorts. My shoes however I was stuck with.
Lucky for us we lost the trail with in sight of the road. This may be where others had lost the trail as well as their was a path for us to follow, it was just not the correct one. I was just happy to get off of the lava!
The hike itself was neat because it was over both a-a and pahoe-hoe lavas. The a-a seemed like it would be slightly harder to get through. It was so much easier because the path showing us the way was much clearer. We even got to see the old chain of craters road. it was so strange turning the corner and popping out onto what was left of a road!
The forest of this portion was much wetter then yesterday. We were disapointed in the end, unable to see the feature we wanted to see. At this point I was nervous to go any further (as we did not know how fat it would be) and I was soked. We turned around and marched back through the forest. (It was a nother half mile to the Right, Pat of course wanted to go left so I'm glad we turned around).
I was happy once we got out of the forest to change into my very dry shorts. My shoes however I was stuck with.
Lucky for us we lost the trail with in sight of the road. This may be where others had lost the trail as well as their was a path for us to follow, it was just not the correct one. I was just happy to get off of the lava!
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