Remember in the Wizard of Oz movie, when everything goes from black & white to color? It’s almost like that… or like walking from one room to another. In just a couple of miles the road to Hilo passes out of the “rain shield” and the dry west side of the island and into rainforest of the west coast.
It is difficult to capture the nature of the rainforest… the textures and colors layer into a complex tapestry.
Near Volcano National Park a side road leads to an interesting volcanic feature. In rare circumstances, lava will rapidly flow over a tree full of moisture. This can be a living tree, standing up… or it can be a soaked log laying down. If conditions are just right, the lava will form a mold around the tree before it burns and disintegrates. There are several tree casts in one location.
When you ask a child to draw a picture of a volcano, they will probably draw a pointy mountain blowing its top, fire and smoke blasting out and lava spilling over and running down. There are explosive volcanoes like that, but the Hawaii volcanoes are different. The volcanoes of Hawaii are larger, flatter mountains that sit over lakes of molten rock called magma. As pressures in the earth force that magma toward the surface, it makes its way through cracks and into tunnels… like pipes that carry the magma along under the earth. The lava is insulated by the surrounding rock and can travel great distances in these lava tubes. Visitors to Volcano NP can walk in a lava tunnel.
