(Volcano to Green Sands Beach to Kona; published January 1st, 2009 from Redwood City, California)

 

After yesterday’s washout, we are glad that so far it is only misting out.  Following our final breakfast in Volcano, we pack up and head into the park.  We go to the Jagger Museum (no relation to Mick as far as I know) mainly for its view of the caldera.  In the daylight, the caldera is huge.  Inside the caldera is a smaller crater that is currently active.  We can only see steam rising from it.  While we got rained on yesterday, the two big mountains here (Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea) got snow.  We can see the snow on the gently sloping peak of Mauna Loa (13,000+ feet at the top). 

 

After looking through the museum, we head down Chain of Craters road again to do a short hike on the Devastation Trail.  The trail is named because the eruption in 1959 destroyed much of the vegetation near here.  At the end of the hike is a great view of the Kilauea crater that we hiked on Day 2.

 

Returning to the car, we begin the drive westward en route to Kona.  Our first stop is a black sand beach.  It’s a small beach, but being on the beach and (finally) in the bright sun is great.  We browse around and look for the turtles that supposedly feed at the coast.  We spot one and it’s much bigger than I was expecting-more than a foot across.  We watch the turtles for a bit then make some sandwiches for lunch.

 

Back in the car, I’m glad to continue driving in the sun.  Our next stop is South Point Road which takes us (you guessed it) south towards the southern most point in the 50 states.  We get down there and the beach is pretty, but it’s mainly good to be out in the sun.

 

Slightly up the road is the parking area for the green sand beach.  Lonely Planet cautions there may be some sketchy locals trying to charge you to park (even though it is free).  We decide to check it out and if we’re uncomfortable we’ll head back (we are also concerned since our clown car (a.k.a. Chrysler P.T. Cruiser) does not have a trunk and all of our stuff is in the back).  Fortunately, there are plenty of cars already parked and no sketchy characters waiting around.

 

We load up our backpacks and begin the 2.5 mile hike to the green sand beach.  The coastline along the way is very pretty and we’re walking along the mud “road” which is drivable in a high clearance 4-wheel drive vehicle which our clown car is very much not.  I’ll also note that others have commented that the "road" eats 4×4’s for breakfast.  This is not a problem for us since we like hiking. 

 

After little more than an hour, we get to the beach.  It’s an olive green color as promised.  We relax on the beach where there are a handful of other people.  We start back hiking up and at the top there are some people who just drove up in a 4×4 and they ask “did you guys hike here?”, which seemed remarkable to them.   They had driven from the other direction and wanted to know where the road went.  We explained the situation and continued on our way back to the car.  At a brisk pace, we made it to the car in less than an hour.

 

I had a few well deserved pieces of chocolate and then we drove the rest of the way to Kona.  It took longer than I had anticipated, but we made it to the hotel safe and sound. We checked in, took much needed showers, and promptly collapsed after dinner.

 

Jump to the Day 4 photos.