Vog, Lava and Stars

First, a note: I casually mentioned the word “vog” under the caption of one of the pictures I recently posted, and it came to my attention that, of course, you probably don’t know what that is! Or else you think I misspelled the word “fog.” In either case, I thought I should clarify. To put it simply, vog is volcanic smog. People most affected by it are those with asthma, as it can cause, among other things, breathing difficulties. It typically blows southwest, so we don’t see it much in Hilo, but Kona gets blasted by it quite often. In fact, the whole time we were over there, the vog limited our ocean views and kept the sun from shining brightly. Bummer!

Last Thursday (yes, it’s taken me a whole week to write about this!) we were invited to drive to the volcano with a guy we’ve met around here. He is, to put it nicely, a bit obsessed with Kilauea, so he was a perfect guide! We weren’t allowed to get very close to the lava flow, but we could still see it, and the viewing area was right by the ocean entry, so there was a lot of smoke and steam rising from it. We weren’t getting smoked out, because the winds were in our favor, so it just made a cool view. Pictures really don’t do it justice, unless maybe we had my dad’s camera, but we took some anyway and you can kind of see what it was like. We brought sandwiches and stuff with us so we sat and had a picnic while it got dark. The lava was especially awesome in the dark, and I don’t know how people can go and NOT stay for that!

Another guy who is staying at the same hotel as us came also. His name is Phil, and he’s from New Zealand, but he’s lived in British Colombia for the past 35 years or so. He is a bit of an astronomer, so we had the privilege of getting a little lesson of the stars! Pleiades (or the Seven Sisters), Orion’s Belt, Sirius, Hades, just to name a few; it was so beautiful and peaceful.

End note: When we first arrived to the parking area of the volcano, there was a huge, glorious, double rainbow across the entire sky. It was beautiful and amazing, and if you know me, you know that I was in heaven…