We are staying a little south of Kona. I’ve been to the big Island 6-7 times but we are bringing some family that have never been to Hawaii at all. We’ll do snorkeling at Kealakekua Bay (Captain Cook to me 
), beaches and, of course, Volcanoes National Park. My exact plans will depend on Kilauea’s activity. If nothing appears imminent early on, we’ll probably drive up to Waimea and then over to Hilo with some waterfall stops. It looks like the Tsunami Museum is only open on Saturdays right now but we’ll hit the best farmers market ever. Love the variety of fruit. Then to the park just before dusk. If an eruption is imminent then I’ll head to the park the quickest way. To me Hawaii is truly paradise. Lucky you live Hawaii!
Sounds like a good plan - I can tell you’ve been to the Big Island before. I will send you a couple private notes so as not to hijack this thread.
IMHO, the snorkeling at Puʻuhonua o Honaunau (Place of Refuge) is just as good as at the Cook monument, and much easier to reach. You don’t need to take a boat to get there. It’s a short drive from where you’re staying.
Thanks for all the inside tips @CairoCarol!
@markn_1 I looked at Puʻuhonua o Honaunau on Google maps and thought to myself, I’d be a little uncomfortable snorkeling here in a sacred Hawaiian area. But I see you were talking about Two Step. Looking at that led me to Kahalu’u Beach Park, which is a 10 minute walk from where I’m staying. So much to do!
The latest estimate for the next Kilauea eruption has been moved back to 1/7 through1/14. Still possible I’ll get lucky.
Yes, I was talking about Two Step, just outside the park. It is IMHO the best snorkeling spot on the island. Kahalu’u is also very good, and a great place for beginners. Entry/exit is very easy and it’s shallow and protected by an ancient breakwater.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours snorkeling on the Big Island, so PM me if you want to discuss any details about snorkeling locations.
I hope it erupts before the end of your trip, @steatopygia! Since you are leaving on the 11th, I assume tomorrow (the 10th) is likely your last opportunity.
For those who haven’t been watching the updates, the predicted eruption date has been creeping later and later … they now saw between the 10th and the 14th.
I just looked at the webcams and Pele is doing some precursor activity, though that usually comes and goes for a while before the real deal starts. Fingers crossed!
As of now, Sat 1/10 at 0700 ET = 0200HT, the lower vent is slowly streaming lava across the crater floor. There’s light coming from the upper vent. And of course steam / gases from both.
V1 cam is zoomed in on the active vent and is a nice albeit small show. It seems to have gotten underway about 4 hours previously, so 01/09 at 2200 HT.
And it’s off ! Not particularly high spurts but a nice lava flow.
I think what it’s doing now still counts as “precursor activity.” Which can be pretty cool to look at. I’m not sure they consider it the start of the eruption. Let’s see … it’s 7:18am HST as I write. We’ll see when the Hawai’i Volcanoes Observatory says the eruption is starting.
It seems to have spent much of Sat evening & the Sat-Sun overnight flowing lava at a steady slow clip with a burst of activity about 0130-0200 HT. No fountaining though.
It’s still chugging along, albeit weakly, now on Sun at 0830 ET = 0330 HT.
Hopefully @steatopygia will give us a report on what they saw/didn’t see, volcano-wise, after getting settled in back home.
The next eruption has officially started, thought the fountaining is unimpressive so far - maybe it is just getting started.
From about 0852 to 0904 HT the v3 cam has a flying insect on the camera housing window. Kinda fun to see it wandering around the image fuzzily obstructing our view.
The fountaining does seem to be ramping up since @CairoCarol’s post ~20 minutes ago.
It’s going pretty nicely now. On V3, you can see some minor fountaining from the upper vent.
Still going heftily two hours after your post.
Last eruption a couple weeks ago the leftmost vent from v3’s POV was the major vent. So far this time that left vent hasn’t done much of anything. It isn’t clogged; it has effused some. But 99% of the total action is on the right vent.
The V1 POV shows that the fountain is split into two components. V3’s alignment pretty well obscures the fact there are two sprays.
V2 gives a good view of the two sprays.
It sure does. Thanks.
Right now = 1715 ET = 1215 HT, the view from V1 shows a continuous thin shower of small rocks raining down in front of the camera. Impossible to tell how close, but from their apparent speed I take it they’re falling not far short of the camera and may in fact be falling both in front and behind the camera.
None seem large, nor is the flux very dense. If the fountaining gets taller so that larger rocks are propelled farther we might get (un) lucky and have v1 cam smashed by a rock soon.
OMG, I just looked at the cams!
Good news and bad news regarding my Kilauea visit. The good news is, I have to try again.
The bad news is, I was skunked. I got to Volcanoes National Park at about 5 PM on Friday the 9th. I planned to get to the Kilauea Overlook viewing spot in the daylight and then stay till dark.
That viewpoint was closed and it was starting to pour. No problem, I’ll head to Devastation Trailhead and hike to the Keanakako’i Overlook. Get to the trailhead with a little bit of daylight and miss the clearly labeled “Eruption this way” sign. Start hiking the wrong way and notice that there is no one else here so we turn around and find the paved road to the overlook. I have lost all daylight now but it doesn’t seem very dark. It didn’t seem very dark because of the fog. We hike out to the overlook and there was nothing to be seen. The fog was limiting visibility to around 10 feet. I had a cell signal and could see on the cams that the vents were at least spattering, but I couldn’t even see a glow in the distance. Drove to the Uekahuna overlook and could barely find the well lit path to the viewing site. Nothing. We were soaked and a little cold and while my family was willing to sit in the car and wait, I called it a loss and we went home. I later saw a post from someone that said the fog cleared at1 AM and lava was flowing. I was a victim of my own over confidence. But, I’m not particularly disappointed. Hawaii shone and was as wonderful as ever. I had a great time snorkeling, went fishing with my sister and her husband and caught a 7 foot marlin despite not being all that into it. Sunsets, whale watching from the lanai and the usual paradise stuff.
It’s my fault. Pele has decided to mock me by screwing up the viewing opportunities of anyone I’m connected to.
Case in point: my niece and her husband are visiting in ten days for about five days. Now, if Pele had deigned to give us a fountain when she was supposed to … say, around January 8 … you’d have gotten a great show and there would have been just about enough time for the pause between episodes to end and my niece to get to enjoy episode 41.
But given that episode #40 is just going on now, I doubt episode 41 will occur when they are on island.
Oh well … they will just have to come back to Hawai’i too!
And I’m glad you had a great visit anyway. A 7’ marlin, wow. What did you do with it? Throw it back, eat it, give it to the crew? (Marlin’s not one of the better eating fishes, I guess, though with the right cooking it can be tasty.)
Pele did her part, Mother Nature decided she had to show who’s the big boss.
The charter boat said in their contract that they “kept all large fish caught”. We didn’t honestly think it would be an issue and it wasn’t really. They sell them to a wholesaler who sells to restaurants. The captain said marlin is usually used in things like Poke but we actually had it in fish in chips in Hilo. Could have been mine.