2/20 | Big Island: The Trail of Tears

The night before we heard from a local that at the end of highway 130 you could see flowing lava, but we decided to take a trail to see the Pu’u O’o Crater.  The guide said it was the best hike to do on the island, so of course we needed to do it, right?  John and I read the guide quickly and it said it was a 3 1/2 hike up the trail and to ignore the trail closed signs.  We ditched the book in the car, packed our lunch, three water bottles each and headed up the trail with the boys.  It was very humid and the trail was very muddy.  There wasn't much to see because it was thick jungle.  On the way up we avoided getting muddy and hopped over puddles and used the logs in the trail to guild our way.  We hit the 2 mile marker and was excited that we had an mile and a half to go.  We were soaking wet in our sweat and starting to get tired heading up this steep trail.  We see mile marker 3 and were jumping for joy knowing we only had a half a mile to go. A few times in the trial we had to jump over old cracks in the earth from previous eruptions.  We hit mile marker 4 and were very confused, still not at the top, still not seeing anything, still thick jungle. We hiked about another mile and came to a clearing of miles of jagged lava rock.  This is where I think we could have queued some crickets and then started kicking ourselves for leaving the guide book in the car.

 We watched as a tour attraction helicopter started circling and that gave us a hunch where the Puu Ooo Crater could be and we started in that direction.  We finally saw some other hikers and asked them where the crater was.  They told us it was another mile or so up towards the smoke and fog and pointed and also told us that all you really see is smoke and fog and no lava.  We decided as a family that we were going to skip the extra mile, eat lunch and head back down to the car.

The trail downhill was pretty horrible.  We now had one water bottle each and we were slipping everywhere, a few of us landed on our butts heading down. After we went about 2 miles we were all miserable and our knees, feet, backs and joints were just aching.  This is why we now call this trail "The Trail of Tears." By the time we got to the car we were so grateful and exhausted.