Goddess Pele

I wanted to see Kilauea for most of my life. I'm lucky enough to live somewhere with access to volcanoes, so the concept of "volcano" wasn't new to me. Mountains with names like Lassen and Shasta are familiar places for me; plus, I've been to Yellowstone. I've walked through lava tubes, seen a hillside of obsidian, watched boiling mud pots. But the idea of an erupting volcano was so exciting, especially an eruption that you could get close enough to safely watch. When Kilauea started erupting, she became a "must do" sight.

My brother can see volcanoes - Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams - from his front porch. He narrowly missed being in the Mt. St. Helens blast zone in 1980, and he brought me a jar of flour-fine ash the next time he came to visit. As a scenic and wildlife photographer, though, he too wanted to see Kilauea.

We both finally got to see her in our middle age years, on separate trips. I was not really prepared for how Hawaiian volcanoes differed from the ones I knew. I was used cone shaped mountains, steeply rising and covered in snow. Sometimes, age and eruption would round the summit, but they still had a recognizable look. I'd been on Oahu before, and thought that the Big Island's volcanoes might look like Oahu's mountains.

Instead, by my frame of reference, they barely looked like mountains. Even Mauna Loa, the distance from her summit to the ocean floor making her the largest mountain on Earth, just looked like a long, gradual, unspectacular rise, ending in more of a plateau than a peak.

Kilauea doesn't even look like a separate mountain to me. I can't see any definition between her and the surrounding area. Plus, her caldera is lower than the surrounding area, not on a peak, like I'd expected.

"It's a steaming pit," said a man close to us, on his first visit there. Well, OK, technically, if you have no poetry in your soul.

It was fascinating, but not what I'd expected.

On our first visit, we were staying about three and a half hours away, so we only saw Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in the daylight. We saw the caldera, participated in a ranger led program, walked through Thurston Lava Tube, saw steam vents. I was happy to see someplace I'd wanted to go for so long.

My brother enjoyed his first trip to the park, but he was on a guided excursion from Oahu, so he had even less time there than we did.

None of us got to see live lava flows, the volcano at night, or (on our wish list) lava flows hitting the sea.

When we came back years later on a family trip, with my husband, most of my children and my brother together, we had wish lists of experiences that we missed the first time. Topping my brother's list were 1. a helicopter tour, and 2. seeing the caldera at night. Those things were on our list, as well.

There were seven of us, all arriving at different times. The first day we were all there, we planned to spend all day in the park. We did everything we'd done before and more, including a drive down the length of Chain of Craters Road.

Before sunset, we staked out spots near the Jagger Museum and waited for dark. For the seven of us, we had 5 regular cameras and 6 cell phone cameras. This spot is the closest observation area to the caldera, and the cameras clicked with regularity.

Then it happened - the first glow of orange in the steam.

Can't see it? Don't worry; it got more and more pronounced as darkness fell.

 

It was just gorgeous. Click, click, click!

Then it was dark, and the view went from stunning to magical.

I thought that it couldn't get much better than that.

But we still had our helicopter ride!

Do you see what we're all packing? Of course - cameras. We had wide lenses, telephoto lenses, a GoPro; this would be one well recorded flight.

(That fanny pack kind of thing we're all wearing? That's a parachute. Or, maybe a flotation device. I'm not kidding. They're mandatory.)

We took off from the far side of the island and headed inland, over the "shoulder road" between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, headed for Kilauea. "Are there any active lava flows right now?" my son asked. We're aware that nature doesn't take orders or requests, but we were hoping.

"I'm sure we'll see something exciting. For one thing, the floor of the caldera fell last night," the pilot said. That means that the hard crust on an area had crumbled, and left the flowing lava underneath visible. For the pilot, this was an everyday occurrence, but for mainlanders, it was very exciting.

As we approached the caldera, my husband, shooting with the wide angle lens, was shooting images like this:

When we got closer, my zoom lens allowed me allowed me to shoot straight down into the caldera. The pilot circled over the volcano, one direction and then another.

OH MY GOODNESS! It was amazing.

As we flew on, the pilot said, "I'll just watch for smoke." That was likely, he said, to indicate something that we'd want to see.

A rising wisp of smoke led to this:

The next led to this:

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! It looked just like something on the National Geographic Channel. "That's new," the pilot said. "It'll be gone in about 15 minutes."

It's hard to estimate from the air, but I think the drip was about ten feet long. I zoomed out to get a bit of perspective, and in again to watch it ooze.

The next sight of rising smoke was larger. An isolated stand of trees was smoking, then catching fire, from the lava at their feet.

"They avoided the last few flows. Poor things, they're goners now," the pilot said.

I felt for the trees, but it was fascinating. Shooting through the moving, curved helicopter windows was difficult, but all of us managed to get numerous shots of this truly once in a lifetime experience.

Mahalo, Goddess Pele, for a look into your home.

All photos, copyright 2015, The Reflection Works Photography

Travel Reviews

I am not a hotel snob. I can't bring myself to be any kind of snob, really.

I love to travel, but all I really want out of a hotel is that it be clean, comfortable, quiet and safe. I don't really plan to spend much time at the hotel. My kids have frequently complained that they don't get to spend enough time in hotel pools.

Sometimes, we'll book a stay at a resort, intending to do more than just sleep and shower there. Our favorite was on the Big Island of Hawaii.

I rarely read guest reviews of properties, because I've discovered that most people hold opinions that are very different from mine. We loved this property. It's one of the few places we've ever stayed where we didn't leave the hotel for an entire day. Our favorite spot was the lagoon, where we snorkeled almost daily. After we came home, I read some reviews, and was glad that I hadn't read them, and perhaps passed on this resort, based on them, before we left.

Many were just scathing. "Awful. I'd never stay here again. Avoid at all costs." Really?

The most common complaint was, "It took 20 minutes to go between the parking lot and our room." Clearly, repeatedly, in the description available, it says that the resort is 62 acres, with several swimming pools, a golf course, the lagoon, restaurants and more. Did anyone imagine that 62 acres meant that you'd be within 5 minutes of your room at all times? Even walking was quick, maybe 25 minutes from property end to end, and there were both a train and gleaming teak and brass boats that would take guests between buildings. Yet, over and over came the complaint about how far apart things were.

One guest complained that the whole place "smelled like a sewer." Um, no, sir, it smelled like the tropics. It smelled wet, because it is wet. The ocean does not smell like a chlorinated pool. Wet, loamy soil does not smell like my home in the desert. Fish ponds will smell like fish live there. There's a country song about a student trip with the lyrics, "We all started yelling when we smelled the beach." I was glad that it was written by someone actually familiar with the ocean. Anyone who expects the real thing to smell like fabric softener called "Ocean Breeze" will be disappointed. The real thing smells wet, a bit fishy, and faintly of decaying plant matter.

We want to go back some day, and take the rest of our family.

At Disneyland, a favorite destination, we like to be within walking distance of the parks. We have stayed on Disney property, at the Grand Californian, and it was great. The room was comfortable, convenient, and had bunk beds for my kids. Why don't more hotels have bunk beds? How often do you want to put two couples in a room together? (Don't answer that.) My travel has usually been with between 2 and 5 kids. Kids do not want to share a bed. Parents do not want to listen to arguments about hogging space and taking the covers. Yet, Disney is one of a very few companies I've ever known to put bunk beds (including ones with a trundle!) in their rooms.

Still, the Grand Californian is much more expensive than other choices. We usually choose places that are in an entirely different cost bracket.

We once stayed at a property that my husband and I loved, and our oldest daughter hated. It was an older place, probably built in the 1950s, and it looked like it. The pool was tiny, and the breakfast was prepackaged pastries. We didn't care; the room was great. We had a mini suite with a king sized bed in one room (important when you and your spouse are both large people, and your spouse can't stand to be touched in his sleep), a second bedroom with 2 queen sized beds, and a full kitchen, with a full sized refrigerator, a stove, a microwave and a dining room table. It would have been especially ideal if we'd been planning an extended stay. We had 5 of us in our room, and my oldest daughter and her husband in another room.

What did this daughter hate the most? The towels. "They're rags! The cleaning rags at my house are nicer than these!" This is true, about her cleaning rags. She is a towel snob. At the age of 13, she was furious with me because I would not replace the one year old beach towel that she'd used exactly twice. ("It's old! It's worn out!") The hotel towels were showing signs of age, sure, but I wouldn't even have remembered them if she hadn't come unglued. (I think she's too picky. She thinks I'm not picky enough. Yes, we love each other and choose to travel together, at least once a year.) She insists that if we ever stay there again, she will bring her own towels. OK.

(The next time she stayed at a hotel, she phoned me. "It was great! Everything was brand new, and the towels were so fluffy!")

Recently we went to Paris, my husband, my youngest 2 children and me. Three of the four of us had never been there before; my son was there two years ago. Paris, of course, is one of those iconic cities that almost everyone wants to see.

As usual, I just wanted clean and comfortable. Unlike my usual routine, I read the reviews on the booking site ahead of time. I knew nothing about Paris, and I wanted to be sure of things like how close it was to the train station; we planned on arriving and leaving by train.

"I think this hotel caters to college backpackers," I told my husband. It was in an older building with few amenities, inexpensive, and the room I booked had 4 single beds. (Unlike the frame of reference in the US, here "older" equated to "about two centuries," nearly as I could tell.) The reviews said that the rooms were small. "If you have a lot of luggage, plan on stacking it in the tub." We were fine with all of this, because we'd be in Paris. It was supposed to be within walking distance of the Louvre - bonus!

When we arrived, tired and dragging our huge American suitcases, they may have looked at our family and decided to put us in a different room, because they gave us a room with 2 queen beds. There were no lifts; we went up three flights of these stairs. (At least we didn't have to traverse the 6 flights to the top.)

Here's the room itself:

It was small, but not as small as I'd expected. The bathroom was larger than I expected, too. The walls were thick stone, so it was comfortable even without air conditioning. With the windows closed, it was also quiet. The only noise that seeped through were TV sounds from the flatscreen on the opposite side of one wall. The beds were some of the most comfortable we slept on during the entire week in Europe. The bedding was thick cotton, hand quilted, and reminded me of something you'd find on a visit to a grandparent's house. And we were in Paris!

It was half a block from the metro station, a few minutes' walk to the train station, close to numerous restaurants. Here's a few of the places we walked to that first day:

Paris!

After we came home, we left our own review. It said basically what I said above - comfortable, clean, great location, few amenities. Then I read the other reviews.

About half said almost the same things I did. The others were deeply scathing. "Never stay here!" "I'm writing on every travel sight (sic) I can find to avoid this place!" "Awful!" Honestly, I think most of those were the traveler's fault. One whined, "I didn't even realize I'd booked a one star property until I arrived." Really, Traveler? It's clearly posted on the website. Even if it wasn't, you thought that a place without a pool, a fitness center, conference rooms or any other modern amenities was a five star?

One woman said, "Overweight people would have a hard time in these rooms." I'm very large, my husband and daughter aren't small, and we were fine. We didn't have to stack our luggage in the tub, either. Another said, "I literally could not turn around." People really need to understand what "literally" means. It is not physically possible to be in a room large enough to hold a bed and be "literally" unable to turn around. Nobody would be ballroom dancing in these rooms, our two beds were each against a wall, but let's not exaggerate here.

One said, "I don't even think the photos on the website were real." Wow. After looking through them, I can say that not only do I not think that they're faked, they're very accurate. I saw the single room across the hall from us, our room, the lobby, the lounge - they all look just like the web photos. The main photo on the site looks almost identical to this one that I took.

I think I'll continue to stick with my usual behavior - I don't ask for, or give, advice very often, because what I think and what others think may or may not bear any resemblance to each other.

Did I mention that I got to see Paris?

The second morning, we walked down the street to a little bakery for breakfast. While we were deciding, someone walked in and said, "Bonjour. Un baguette, sil vous plait." It was delightful - we were having An Authentic French Experience! I'd be happy to do it again.

I'd be happy to do it from a comfortable, clean one star hotel.