harris happiness: hawaii: volcanoes national park

Ryan & I were both pretty excited for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park!

It was a few days after our hike to the black sands, run through the jungle & getting caught in the rain -- this time I was prepared with sneakers, a sports bra, and extra clothes :)

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was amazing! I took soooo many pictures because I was in awe of everything -- nothing is quite like being there though.

The park included lots of different trails and look outs. I can't even remember how many we did total, but it ended up being like 10 miles of walking and climbing. When we first got the park, we went to the visitor center for maps and some info on the best spots to go. We had all day, but we wanted to make sure we had a good experience and didn't miss anything major!

The tour guide we talked with was super nice and highlighted pretty much everything on the map. I laughed, looked at Ryan and said "soo what ones did you want to do from all these?" He responded with "all of them."

Duh! I should have know ;-)

We first drove a little to a volcano museum and lookout. This is as close as we could get to the steaming volcano. Close enough for me, thanks.

We actually drove through a lot of the park and stopped at a bunch of steam vents and lookouts.

The hike we were most excited about was the Kilauea Iki Trail - a 4 miler around the crater's perimeter {through jungle} and onto the crater floor.

Here's a picture of where we started :0)

We're know to run-walk, so it took us about 1.5 hours to walk the entire trail.

One of the many lookouts!

A few guard rails, but not many!

A little break at the bottom of the crater, before we make our trek across!

I was certain we were going to lose track of the Ahu and stumble aimlessly around the crater parking lot until someone rescued us with a helicopter.

I'm not sure what I feared with THIS guy as our guide! {Love the hat & backpack Ryan! haha}

And we made it!

We also did another 2.5 mile hike to what the tour guide said was her "favorite spot." We were super excited and skipped our way across open lava land to climb another mountain and see.....

Tree tops! Total womp womp. On this hike it was sunny, breezy, and the perfect conditions for a last day of vacation left side of face and neck sunburn. Thanks so much tour guide!

In all honesty though, the views were pretty amazing - see....

The last bit of our day was spent driving to the very end/edge of the park to see the Holei Sea Arch.

The 20 minute drive was terrifying and breathtaking.

A nice foreign couple took this picture for us :0) They both kept nodding their head yes and smiling really big when they took it! Love it!

Holei Sea Arch

I love a good bunch of palm trees. It we weren't ~~dead tired~~ anxious to get to the lava on the road, we probably would have gone down to take a closer look!