What a day

So I was trying to sleep in on my day off but at about 6:30am I heard a commotion in the driveway in front of the tree house. Well Becky was yelling about something and I had to go to the bathroom anyway so I got up and when I walked over, there was a fucking huge pig that had escaped it’s enclosure next door at another farm. It was this giant male pig who was not having it when we tried to put him in the chicken pen. He burst his way out and it was quite a sight all of us running around trying to figure out what to do with this pig. And as this was happening, of course the heavens finally open and it rained for real. A good down pour but sort of inopportune. Hopefully we’ll keep getting rain like that. Here’s the pig and Spider Man, who finally came back!

Then for breakfast, Michael and I had extra special cookies and today was deemed the lava walk day. We’ve been trying to go out there for days, well actually its only been a priority for me, but I got Mike and Michael to come along with. Well, it took a little bit more time to get across the lava field because everything just looked so incredible. The colors were fantastic and I saw a lot of rainbow lava rocks, literally. I also saw this heart shaped lava rock that I really liked…

We had a nice snack and a break when we got to the coast before we walked along it to get the new lava. The waves crashing against the coastline emitted the earths heartbeat and I could almost feel it. 

Then we walked up the coast towards the lava and I don’t think it matters how many pictures I take, it cannot capture how truly incredible a sight it is to walk up to this giant plume of steam coming from the lava entering the ocean. As we were walking we came upon a newly deposited black sand beach. Tiny particles of lava spew into the ocean during the eruption and the currents carry them down shore and throw them up and form a beach. Michael said it wasn’t there a month ago. So we hung out for awhile on one of the worlds newest beaches…

It was phenomenal, and then we realized that the sand close to rock that I was sitting next to above was radiating heat. We went around the side and tried to dig a hole in the sand but it was too hot to touch. Cool. But actually, Hot.

Then we walked towards the lava and we walked on a lot of really fresh flow. So fresh that remnants of the trees in the path of the lava were burned down all around.

My favorite were the holes that were left in the lava from where a tree was taken but by the time it had fully incinerated, the lava had cooled into a hole.

There was this really cool old Hawaiian rock wall that had also been partially taken:

And then we went closer to the most real cloud factory ever. I have so many pictures but none of them can really do this incredible sight justice

   

In those pictures, the higher ground is the old coastline and all of the lava lower down are all new flows. So, I was also standing on some of the newest land on earth too. Here are some of the old coastline where you can really see the new flow coming over.

 

The yellow there is sulfur deposited on cracks from gas seeps.

All in all, we were out hiking for 6 hours. It was a really good time and when we got back, Michael and I decided to get burgers and beer for dinner and it was just delightful.

Now, I’m exhausted and so ready for another week of work to start.