10/15/2023
On the second day of the one week long September 2023 Kilauea eruption at Halema`uma`u Crater, I drove out to the Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park, with my dog . After some dinner with Meli, while waiting for the sun to set, I tried the typical spots, but they were pretty crowded. So I decided to venture out from the usual and check out some areas I have never shot from. I lucked out and found some ‘people less’ areas and was able to score some cloudless moments between rolling clouds and short rainy moments. The lava lake had risen much higher than my last visit to the park. This was actually the most lava and fissure activity I have seen in the crater. It was a great show. Later in the night I headed back to a viewpoint with a better angle on the fountaining fissures, but the rain, mist, clouds and people were there also. Because of that I wasn’t able to get any decent shots into the crater. Oh well, I’ll have to be stingy and keep those visuals in my head, to myself… Sometimes it has to be that way.
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