Live From Hawaii Volcano National Park

Hi Everyone

Sorry it has been a while since the last post, but, we have really been busy and have been working hard to educate visitors to HVNP.

After surviving the Tsunamis on the island of Kauai, Patty and I arrived on the Big Island of Hawaii on March 1 and were greeted by HVNP staff wit flowered lei's.

For two weeks we were immersed in Hawaiian culture, biology, botany, geology and history. It was really like a language immersion course. We were then turned loose in the Visitor Center to inform guests about the park, give short talks and lead hikes.

Over the past few weeks we have talked to hundreds and hundreds of people and have met some very interesting folks. We have also learned an awful lot about the island.

We are living in a house in the park with a woman from Spain and a guy who is retired from Hewlett Packard from Wash. State.

We have learned that things move a little slower here as we called the cable company when we first arrived for Internet access and just had it installed March 31. So there is my excuse for not posting. We have had access to the Internet with the parks computers, but have not been able to post any photo's on their computers.

We have been keeping busy by working 40 hours per week and we have every Mon and Tues. off.

We also have Saturdays off for canoe paddling practice in the 6 person outrigger canoes. We are preparing for the big races in Hilo on April 11. It really is a lot of fun to paddle these boats and I may have to try and find one for the Mississippi. I will post a picture of one.

We have taken a quick tour of the entire island and have started to explore individual areas that looked interesting. We have gone swimming with Green Turtles at the Black Sand Beach and have visited both the Green Sand Beach and also South Point, the most southern point in the U.S. We have also seen countless waterfalls, been to a great hot pond and eaten a lot of Sushi.

We have also seen flowing lava from a distance and have had some good views of lava glowing in the evening in the Halemauumau Crater, but as we tell the visitors, the lava flow is not very strong right now and we are hoping for a big eruption before we leave. We have felt a few earthquakes the biggest being a 4.4 which shook everything for a short period. Usually quakes precede eruptions, so we are hoping for more quakes and a big eruption.

We each have a mountain bike provided by the park and I have been riding a couple times a week. My favorite ride is to ride up Mauna Loa Road from 4000 feet to about 6500 feet. It is the only ride that I can take that goes uphill first. It takes me about 1 hour and 25 minutes up and 25 minutes down. We are living at 4000 feet and most of the other rides I take go down hill first and then I have to climb back up.

We also bought a throw away car. It is a 1993 Subaru Legacy Wagon with less miles then the one Chris has been driving in Duluth for the past few years. We will probably be able to sell it for what we paid and if not it is still less than what we would have rented one for 3 months so we figured we had a good deal. It gets us to where we want to go and blends right into the island cars, so we don't worry about having it broken into.

Patty has been taking thousands of pictures and will post some of them later tonight. Her main subject has been on of the "threatened" native birds of Hawaii, the Apapane. We have a nest just outside our window and have watched one adult feed another and then an adult feeding the young birds in the next. Watch for posting.

We have met a lot of people from MN and have been visited by friends from MN and also Utah. We will try to post more frequently now that we have a high speed connection. If you are interested you can check out the park we are working in at http://www.nps.gov/havo/index.htm

You can also check out a view of the crater in our back yard at: http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/
Just check out the Web cam view for the Halamaumau crater. We will also post a picture of the glow we have seen a number of times. It really is pretty neat to think we are living on the most active volcano in the world. I will try to remember to add these links to the links on the blog, so you can keep a close eye on the volcano if you are interested. The web cams are live with updates every 5 minutes.

We hope everyone has a nice Easter Holiday and we will post again soon, even if it is only pictures.