An Unscheduled Stop / Hawaii By Night

We had spent the entire afternoon at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but we weren't quite done with it. Having missed out on seeing lava up close, we were not going to miss the next best thing: returning to the Kilauea Crater after sunset. By night, the glow from deep inside the crater was said to be visible from the observation point we'd visited earlier. But we had a couple of hours to wait before the sun would go down.

We found out about a short hike that seemed like it would be good to pass the time, on a trail through an area called Kipuka Puaulu. It was back out past the Visitor Center, on the other side of the main road. It was also one more street beyond the one we accidentally turned on. We realized the mistake fairly quickly, but by then we'd noticed a sign on the side of the road promising a winery up ahead. Here, in kind of the middle of nowhere? We were fairly curious.

Sure enough, one mile down the road, we arrived at Volcano Winery.

As Hawaii is south of even Florida back on the mainland, this place touted itself as the southernmost winery in the U.S. It seemed to have two unofficial mascots hanging around in the parking lot. The Big Island has a number of feral cats roaming around. (There were several near our bed and breakfast, in fact, which one of the home owners -- a veterinarian -- was tending to. We were expressly warned not to attempt to pet them.) One such cat was patrolling the winery, while the other was lounging in one of the parking spaces, glaring at us with lazy disdain for even thinking about parking there.

Once we did get inside the winery, we enjoyed a flight of eight different wines, most of which we liked enough to arrange for a few bottles to be sent to us back home. They'll make for nice future memories of this great and unexpected stop in the middle of a wonderful vacation.

There seemed to be enough sunlight after our wine that we still decided to look for the Kipuka Puaulu trail head afterward. Yet even though it only took us perhaps 5 minutes to get there, things weren't looking quite so inviting by then. Still, it seemed like we had about another half hour before sunset -- and flashlights to take with us if we'd judged the length of the trail wrong.

It turned out we were right about it being maybe a 30 minute hike. We were wrong about how much sunlight was left. In a matter of 10 minutes, the flashlights were definitely appreciated. In 10 more, they were necessary. We couldn't clearly see any of the sights that the trail pamphlet and signs were pointing out, but the gist was that transported vegetation from off the island is very damaging to the things that grow locally, and that a substantial conservation effort has now begun to reverse that damage.

Whatever the vegetation, we were hiking along a trail through it in what felt basically like the dead of night. We had the place completely to ourselves, which I suppose was a tiny bit spooky. But on a rather tourist filled day on a very tourist filled island, having a place entirely to ourselves was also pretty neat.

Needless to say, we did make it back to our car safe and sound, and having now killed enough time to return to the Kilauea Crater. It was very much worth our wait.

The inside of the volcano seethed steam and glowed orange, a completely different spectacle than we'd seen by day. It was not quite lava up close and personal, but it may well have been just as hypnotic.

This long day in the national park hadn't really afforded us an opportunity for meals. While we'd brought plenty of snacks bought at the grocery, we were really wanting something more substantial, especially with a two hour drive back to the bed and breakfast still ahead of us. But the trouble is, on the Big Island, many things start closing very soon after sunset. Our one real option was the "Shaka Restaurant," a place billing itself as the "southernmost bar in the U.S." (Southernness is apparently a big thing for this slice of Hawaii.) The food was not the best, but it beat another granola bar and round of jerky to cap the day.

The end of that long day also basically brought an end to the first leg of our trip, on the Big Island. The next morning, we'd be moving on to Maui.