Hawaii, Part 1

After we played a few hard-earned games of Halo the weekend after classes, Kalle, Elena and I set out from Williamstown for an epic Spring Break adventure. Before we knew it, we were on a plane from LA to Hilo, counting down the hours until we were on vacation in a true geologic paradise. This may not be the white-sand-and-palm-tree paradise that comes to mind when you think about "paradise," however—at least not for this first week. Talk about a strange and distant land. One of the most unbelievable differences is just the fact that eruptions are such a common part of life here. Not only are they a large part of the native religion, they are a part of life as a local in parts of the island. Back home in New England, I've always thought of volcanoes as something you have to stay as far away from as possible, but here in Hawaii, you can't get too far away from them even if you want to. Who says geology is boring?

Our first few days involved walking through pit craters, finding recent lava flows from Kilauea, hiking around Mauna Kea at 12,000 feet, Gordon Smith (the lone biologist on the trip and Hannah's cousin) explaining interesting island flora, touring kipukas, and expoloring my personal favorite features, lava tubes.

For the first week, we've been living in rental houses at a small B&B in the town of Volcano, on the border of National Park land. We do have a blog, but it's rather inundated by inside jokes and may not be that interesting to the outside reader. http://hiloandstitch.blogspot.com/.

 

Looking out across Kilauea Iki crater floor, the last eruption of which occurred in 1959

A lava hook

 Diving into shallow water...with shoes on

 Stand back, science is dangerous

 Inside a large lava tube

 

 Trying to get those extra few inches up to 13,900 ft

 Four of us working on extreme photobombing skills

 Kalle tries and fails to take one of those pictures where you pretend to hold something in the background in the palm of your hand

Kalle drives recklessly into some lava spilt across a road

Kalle drives recklessly off the summit of Mauna Kea

Kalle drives recklessly off a cliff and into the ocean

More updates are coming. I've already learned more from sight and experience in the first five days than I have in a full semester in almost any other class. However, Paul (Karabinos, the professor in charge of the trip) says that once we move to Puako next week, the pace of our trip will slow down considerably. Apparently that means: beach in the morning, geology for the middle part of the day, and beach in the afternoon. Some of us here may never leave!