© 2009 Ede Schweizer, All rights reserved. Made in California. Built to scroll right. |
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Brandie getting ready to hit the skies |
They have room on this bird for two pilots? |
Walking the strip |
Got my ears on |
Heart-throb Bob checking all the pre-flight vitals, or is he just wondering what all these dials are for? |
Just like floating on air, take-off was amazingly smooth |
Our first glimpse of Mauna Kea to the south |
Small cinder cones in the foreground, just in front of a more recent lava flow |
'Is this thing on? - Over.' |
Small airfield |
You can pretty much date the lava flows according to colour, the darker the more recent |
First views into the Mauna Loa Crater area with white plumes of sulfuric dioxide |
The Volcanoes National Park Museum is in this photo in the bottom right to give a bit of scale |
Thankfully nothing other than this visible cloud of gas has been added to the recent activity list |
You can see a road winding around the pluming crater from right to left, this was closed due to air quality |
Heading south we came across another series of pluming vents, a small geo-instrument near the opening |
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Our pilot put us right over the top of this opening, and there it was, molten lava, serious |
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This photo feels like it was taken around the dawn of time |
A flow totally taking out a 4-ways |
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This massive lava flow left just a small littering of trees along its edges |
Some more than amazing cloud formations near the coastline |
Not much of a beach, but this is where lava meets ocean |
While we were visiting this was where the lava was actually dropping right into the sea water |
Shiny new liquid rock seeps across the barren scape |
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Just shear cliffs with waves breaking them into smaller bits of rock, nature at work |
First sighting of lava entering the Pacific and increasing the size of the Big Island |
Newly born earth meeting the currents of an ancient sea |
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The formation of an island |
Pele in action, the goddess of the volcano |
Fire and water |
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Captain Bob flipping us from one side to the other for some spectacular views |
Some crazies, cheating death for a close-up view of the open lava flow. Hmmmm, are they wearing dockers? Seems safe. |
Apparently a shelf just like this one slid off into the ocean a few weeks prior. You can see people on the shiny new lava to the right |
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One last look into the heart of earth-creation |
Here's where we took a walk across the lava, on the right of this photo, out to a night lava viewing location, super cool |
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Camping on the beach |
Entering the valley of water |
Waterfalls in every direction along steep valley walls |
Lazy cows |
Back to the northside of the island through the clouds |
Home again |
Roger that, we made it! |
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