On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good morning everyone,
As we ease into Super Tuesday, make sure to support the candidate of your choice.
I was following the 2018 on various youtube sites going “I know where that is, I’ve been down that road. Numerous beautiful spots were affected (I don’t want to say destroyed as this is all natural happenings) not to mention many homes. About half the roads down in the Pahoa area are gone and the lovely circle route from there gone. All in all quite a demonstration of Nature’s/Pele’s power.
This is part of the old coast road. You drive along and all of a sudden you come across the following.
We drove over 3 separate flows on temporary unpaved sections and then back in the jungle.
The shapes are incredible.
Next day we took Chain of Craters road from 4000′ in the park down to sea level. I love the swirls and layers in this much older flow.
Currently we’re enjoying the 80º weather in Kona. Hope you all enjoyed the trip half as much as we did.
Mary G
Amazing. Thanks for sharing.
eclare
Wow!
mrmoshpotato
Grabbers – get smashed before going down that road.
Dorothy A. Winsor
An exciting drive!
satby
I’ve seen pictures of the swirls, never of the jagged shapes of solidified lava. Very cool!
arrieve
What satby said. Very cool pictures!
J R in WV
When we visited the Big Island, a local rock hound friend took us around the edges of the National Park to a crevasse which had blown lava into the air. At the time the wind was constant and steady, so all that arial lava landed and piled up, building a wall of black aa lava [the local joke was that aa lava was named for the sounds you made when trying to cross it — all very sharp] around 20 feet high and 8 or 10 feet thick — it ran out of sight so miles long.
The crevasse was really deep and even in bright sunlight was only visible for the top 20 feet or so, and the rough black lava absorbed.
We also saw fumaroles with crystallized sulfur around them, as glittery as little yellow diamonds.
This was before this last newly violent eruption, which has probably changed everything around that area drastically.
Wag
Your photos show the two very disparate forms of basaltic lava flows. The names are the traditional Hawaiian descriptors for the lava types. The first, the very jagged, hard edged flow, is called aa. If I remember my geology correctly, it forms when there is significant dissolved gas in the lave that bursts forth when the lava comes to the surface, kind of like carbonated weather after shaking it up, then opening it up.
The other form is the smooth, rope like flow. It is called pahoehoe.
These names are now used worldwide. When I toured Iceland a couple of summers age I saw signs describing the lava flows using the traditional Hawaiian names.
Kristine
@Wag:
That is cool.
Great photos!
allium
FYI, aa (or a’a – the quote mark represents a glottal stop, like in Hawai’i) is pronounced “ah-ah” – which is also the sound people make when trying to walk across it with insufficient footwear.