Hey Mom I found a sedimentary rock!

Where does that title come from? A high school/early college age girl down at Volcanoes National Park. That’s right in the home of Pele where there is nothing but basalt for miles she “found a sedimentary rock”. I tried not to laugh until I was out of earshot!

Allow me to back up. When I started work at my super awesome amazing job, there was another new employee. He is from Montana and had never been to Hawaii! So this weekend we went to see the volcano! We did not do the tourist thing and get up ass early, nope we got a leisurely start. We stopped to say hi to the south point zebra, who lives with some long horns and buffalo!

Zebra

Long Horns

Buffalo

Then we continued around the island. We stopped at my all time favorite bakery the Punalu’u Bakery (also the most southern Bakery in the US!). When we got to volcanoes national park we went to the Halemaʻumaʻu crater overlook (Halemaʻumaʻu is the traditional home of Pele and currently has a lava lake in another smaller crater within it and is degassing. It can be seen in the webcam).

After wandering around the Jagger museum there for a bit we hit the road again to go down to the coast. On the way we stopped at the Steam Vents and sulfur bank and walked around a bit.

steam vent

Sulfur deposits

Next we drove down off the Pali to the coast.
Older flows coming down the Pali

There is a sea arch at the coast that I can never remember the name, but the waves were crashing and it was stunning!


We of course walked out to the road closed sign in the lava.


And I looked at some cool textures in the old flows.


Incidentally when I came to Hawaii when I was in high school this area was the surface flow area. It is fun to walk out on it now and remember how fresh it was when I first came to Hawaii. Now there are plants growing in it!

End of Part 1
I want to look some information up about the other stops we made before I write them up! I hope you enjoy the photos!