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Hawaii Volcanoes National Park ~ Big Island ~ Hawaii
7.22.2011 - 9 comments 
What can you say about a first trip to the Big Island other than... it sure is big? Well there is plenty that can be said about it. But its bigness is the first thing I noticed about it other than how much black lava there is on the island. It is so big in fact that it is almost twice as large as all of the other Hawaiian Islands put together.

Of course you know that my first adventure on any trip that has a National Park is to knock off one more line item from my personal "Bucket List". For me this National Park was one that I was really excited about because of the fact that it had a real active volcano in it.

This park was founded in 1916, and it encompasses 333,000 acres from the summit of Maunaloa to the sea. Here you'll be able to find 150 miles of hiking trails through volcanic craters, scalded deserts, rain-forests as well as a museum, petroglyphs, a walk-in lava tube called Nahuku (Thurson's Lava Tube) and two active volcanoes: Maunaloa, which last erupted in 1984 and Kilauea which has been erupting since January 3rd, 1983. In fact this caldera in Kilauea was making lots of gas and noise when we were there and then the very next day after we were there, it erupted.

The extraordinary natural diversity of the park was recognized in 1980 when it was named a World Biosphere site by UNESCO and in 1987 when the park was again honored as a World Heritage site. As you can see from several of these shots below and the one with the title, Thurson's Lava Tube was a highlight to my park visit. You started off in a beautiful rain forest and then you got to what looked like a fern covered cave opening. Then as you strolled through the lava tube, it was lit in several places by lights so that you could see where you were going because the tube was long enough that you could not see the other side where it came out.

As you exited the tube, you had to climb up what looked like 15-20 feet worth of cement steps. At that point you were back in the rain forest again. It was a wonderfully beautiful walk and the trip through the tube was one of many highlight features of a wonderful trip just I will expand on later blog posts.

Kilauea is sometimes called "the world's only drive-in volcano." This prolific volcano currently produces 250,000-650,000 cubic yards of lava per day, enough to resurface a 20-mile-long, two-lane road daily. As of January 1994, 491 acres of new land have been created on Hawaii's Big Island. The current eruption may last another 100 years or stop tomorrow. Pele, the volcano goddess who the Hawaiians say lives here, is very unpredictable. But the chance to watch Kilauea's blistering lava flows meet the sea is just one of the reasons to visit. It was really a wonderful sight to see but at the same time, it was a rather eerily scary and deadly looking one too.

The shots I am adding to this post hopefully will give you some kind of vision of what we saw while in the National Park itself. But you can't really appreciate the smells and odors that came with these shots. Nor can you feel the sense of heat and deadness that the black lava everywhere had.

“The glowing magma emerges like redhot toothpaste from a long, wide crack and then crawls into the Pacific, creating a tall, furious cloud of steam." ~ Robert Gross

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8:18 AM - You can COMMENT to the above post here too...


Redwoods National Park ~ CA
6.09.2011 - 9 comments 
The next step in my "bucket list" knock off just happened to be the Redwood National (and State Parks) that are located along the coast of northern California. They are really not too far from our visit to Lassen Volcanic National Park and the path that led us through the City of Redding, California.

There are several areas that comprise Redwood National Park and California's Del Norte Coast, Jedediah Smith, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Parks (dating from the 1920s), the combined RNSP contain 133,000 acres. Located entirely within Del Norte and Humboldt Counties, the four parks, together, protect 45% of all remaining Coastal Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) old-growth forests, totaling at least 38,982 acres.

I am not sure if any of you saw the program that National Geographic Magazine did on these Redwood Trees in this area or not but if you get a chance to see it, it is definitely a must see for me. You can even stream it on NetFlix if you have it. It relates two different stories about the Redwoods. One is about trying to photograph them and the other is about tow people who try and find the most southern and northern groves of Redwoods. It was a quest that they did on foot and it took almost a full year and they traveled about 1,500 miles.

These trees are the tallest and one of the most massive tree species on Earth. In fact they are said to be the largest living thing on the planet. In addition to the redwood forests, the parks preserve other indigenous flora, fauna, grassland prairie, cultural resources, portions of rivers and other streams, and 37 miles of pristine coastline.

In 1850, old-growth redwood forest covered more than 2,000,000 acres of the California coast. The northern portion of that area, originally inhabited by Native Americans, attracted many lumbermen and others turned gold miners when a minor gold rush brought them to the region. Failing in efforts to strike it rich in gold, these men turned toward harvesting the giant trees for booming development in San Francisco and other places on the West Coast.

After many decades of unobstructed clear-cut logging, serious efforts toward conservation began. By the 1920s the work of the Save-the-Redwoods League, founded in 1918 to preserve remaining old-growth redwoods, resulted in the establishment of Prairie Creek, Del Norte Coast, and Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Parks among others.

Redwood National Park was created in 1968, by which time nearly 90% of the original redwood trees had been logged. The National Park Service (NPS) and the California Department of Parks and Recreation (CDPR) administratively combined Redwood National Park with the three abutting Redwood State Parks in 1994 for the purpose of cooperative forest management and stabilization of forests and watersheds as a single unit.

The ecosystem of the RNSP preserves a number of threatened animal species such as the Brown Pelican, Tidewater Goby, Bald Eagle, Chinook Salmon, Northern Spotted Owl, and Steller's Sea Lion. In recognition of the rare ecosystem and cultural history found in the parks, the United Nations designated them a World Heritage Site on September 5, 1980 and an International Biosphere Reserve on June 30, 1983.

The Park was spectacular and even though there is no way (short of using the National Geographic Magazine's photographer) to even try to get the huge perspective and enormity of these trees, I have tried to capture at least some of the magnificent size of these giant trees and the beauty of this National Park for you to enjoy.

"Our redwood trees are treasures that need to be protected and preserved. By adding more than 25,000 acres to Redwood National Park , this legislation would help conserve the redwood forest, provide watershed protection, and protect wildlife habitats." ~ Diane Feinstein

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11:06 AM - You can COMMENT to the above post here too...