The Ground is Lava

Today we went to Volcano National Park.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is watching LeVar Burton on Reading Rainbow, standing on a lava field, explaining the difference between Pahoehoe and A'a lava. I became obsessed with volcanoes. I wanted more than anything to see all those things for myself. (Well, okay, maybe I wanted a pony more than anything. Pahoehoe and A'a were next.)

And today, twenty years later, I got to do just that!!!!!

We arrived late on purpose, because the lava flows are most spectacular at night. We set out across a huge expanse of hardened lava, trying to reach a flow in the distance. The hardened lava is iridescent and it sounds like breaking glass as you walk.

Steam rose from the ground. We stepped over deep crevices in the ground and as it got darker, I looked down in a crevice and was terrified to see a thin line of glowing red lava.

Well that explains the hot ground.

At that point I realized that I was basically playing a live action platform video game. Jump from one seemingly stable platform to the next, but actually they're all just sitting on top of an enormous lake of red-hot liquid rock.

The lava flows (which we finally reached after about an hour) were spectacular indeed. It was JUST like on Reading Rainbow, and I was LeVar Burton!

Thick lava oozed down the mountain, going whichever way it pleased, and I understood why there are no hiking trails. The landscape changes every day. The Earth is giving birth to fire. We stood there for a long time, just watching and listening to the scrapings and cracklings as the lava dried but continued to move.

I felt like we had come to Mount Doom. I wished some eagles would come and carry us back to our car, but no, we had to walk back.

By this point it was completely dark and started to rain. We had no idea which way we had come or how to get back to our bikes. The rocks were slippery and my boots had lost some traction due to being a little melted by the hot ground. Everyone got snippy with each other. We must have spent at least two hours marching all around that damn lava field, up and down, before we finally ran into a roped-off area. We followed the rope around and found the road, THANK GOD. 

We also found a roadblock and several ominous warning signs. I've posted a picture below.

Then we had to walk back to our bikes, and bike to the car, soaking wet. We didn't get home until 2 am.

It was worth it.