On the Big Island, I had a chance to venture off from the group into the Kilauea Crater for a bit of a hike. This was very cool and definitely one of the highlights of the trip. The hike started from the Kilauea Lookout (which is where this picture was taken from). The trail leads around the rim for a while (about halfway around), and then decends into the crater itself. You can see the trail from up here - it's that lighter line leading through the middle. And if you can zoom in far enough, you can even make out people walking on the trail. Crazy!
The Kilauea Crater trail is about 5 miles long, and the first part around the rim starts off going through some rainforest which made me really feel like I was away from pretty much everything. Anyway, before we move on, here's a little background information on the Kilauea volcano. It's an active (yes, active) volcano that has been erupting continuously since 1983. However, it's not a stereotypical volcano in that it doesn't erupt in the same way that you see in movies. Most of the lava is transported out of the volcano through lava tubes (which we'll get to later on) to the ocean, where it solidifies when it hits the water. Every day the island is getting bigger due to the lava from the Kilauea volcano. (There's a good FAQ online with more information for the volcanicaly curious.) 
Anyway, back to hiking. When I made it close to the decent into the crater, I realized that I was making very good time and at the pace I was going, I would be finished a long time before I was supposed to get picked up, so I pulled out the map from the visitors centre and found a few little side-trails that were branching off from mine. Several trail connections later, and I had made it to the rim of the Kilauea Caldera, which was absolutely huge. There were a bunch of little research posts just below me inside the caldera, too. I figured they were probably for monitoring seismic activity. Anyway, I spent a bit of time just gawking at the sheer immensity of the crater and the steam pouring out of the vents before I returned to the crater trail.
After a bit of a descent, I made it to the crater floor. This is where the hiking got really cool; you couldn't really tell from as high up as the lookout was how rough the terrain was. You also couldn't see the multitude of steam vents. I found that the biggest challenge to hiking in the crater was trying to figure out where the trail actually was, since it doesn't really look as obvious as it did from the lookout. I realized partway through that there are piles of rocks stacked up throughout the crater, which serve as guide markers to show you where to go. This was also where going backwards had another minor advantage - every now and again, you'd be able to see some people in the distance and know you were on the right track. Anyway, after making my way all the way across (and taking a ton of pictures), I ended up on the other side, hiking upwards towards my pickup point at the Thurston Lava Tubes.
These were pretty cool as well. Basically, when lava is flowing down a mountain, for example, the surface of the lava cools down and solidifies, creating a tube of lava underground. When the eruption stops, the lava drains from the tube, like this one. They have one of these tubes lit up that you can walk through at the end of the trail, and there's even an unlit tube that continues on further, with flashlights sitting on the stairs for those feeling adventurous. And yes, I was feeling adventurous, so I went down the unlit tube as far as I think it went (although the not-so-powerful flashlights ceased to be particularily helpful at this point).So there you have it. Hiking through volcanoes. Very cool!
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