Happy Thanksgiving!!!! It sure didn’t feel like Thanksgiving at all today but it wasn’t a bad day either! The day before we had docked in Honolulu to refuel and restock, so I got to call everyone. It’s a good thing I did as I didn’t end up having time to call while on my trip. So, we headed up Maona Kea, the tallest mountain in the world (when you measure from its base, which is on the seafloor). We stopped partway up to eat lunch and acclimate to the higher elevation. The stop had this really cool flower that takes ten years to grow, will bloom during the tenth year and then die and restart the process again. This wasn’t a blooming year, but we still got to see the strange flower. It looked like thin aloe leaves that were silvery. Now, we actually had a very large group of people on this trip, but we were split into 12 so that we could fit into these elongated vans. This is because it is required to have 4-wheel drive as you ascend the volcano because a very large stretch of the drive is incredibly bumpy terrain. The State does this to limit the amount and type of traffic going up the volcano. Eventually, we made it to the top. We had passed clouds and could now look over a large part of the Big Island. Many of the volcano eruptions (look like hills) were very red and some had some other coloring (like green and brown). Our guide told us that this climate is very similar to that of Mars and so there are many tests done here. Also, they chose the top of Maona Kea because there are clear skies and no wind so that their calculations won’t be affected. We got to walk a bit to go to the peak, passing some snow (snow in Hawaii!!!?!) and taking measured breathes to get to the top. There was an offering pile of wood and other assorted things that the Hawaiian people bring to Pele (goddess of fire). Then, we got to tour Keck I observatory! That’s my maternal grandparent’s last name and it’s not that common - how cool is that?! I always knew they were here but I never thought I would ever actually go inside one of them. It was really quite amazing. They have a laser they shoot into the sky every single night (that’s right, 365 nights a year) and it has better resolution than Hubble. They have liquid nitrogen cooling the inside of the domes to prevent condensation from accumulating on the very large mirrors. It costs $2/sec to turn them on and move them! And they operate them every night, from the minute the sun sets till morning light! Pretty expensive! Oh, and the researchers can only work up there 3 days a week to avoid the negative effects of the thinner air. Thus, there is lodging part way up the volcano for them to stay at while researching. It was pretty cool.
After we saw the volcano, we started heading down and went through a cloud that had drifted over the roadway. It was like going through a thick fog machine. I had seen this ridiculous bumper sticker in the store saying, “Beware of invisible cows”. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, there are cows grazing on the sides of the road and I guess sometimes they walk onto the road in the middle of the cloud and then it looks like they are invisible. Pretty funny. Anyways, we then headed to a lava cave. I happened to have the geology professor in my group so he explained how lava caves are formed. When the lava is flowing (which it can go up to 40mph!), sometimes the top layer can cool and harden and then the hotter part flowing beneath can sink into the ground. This ends up creating a pocket that becomes a cave. Thus, there are few to no stalagmites or stalactites within and you can see the ridges in the lava from where it was flowing, kind of like a fossil. That was pretty cool. Finally, we went to rainbow falls which was gorgeous and had two parts of a river converge into a waterfall. There were also some enormous banyan trees right next to the river. It was pretty cool.
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