Hiya Scott,

Sorry took so long, I had mid-terms last week and couldn't get to scanning the pics.

Go to www.hotwiredhome.com/hawaii and there's an index for a few pics there, the 4 best ones of the lava and the 4 best from the top of Mauna Kea. Neither I nor my girlfriend are expert photogs, so they aren't the best, but will give you an idea of how close you can get to the lava.

The group of people standing around the lava are just people who parked on the street and walked up to it, there's no "guided tours" or whatever, you can just walk right up to the stuff. If you go at night, take some BRIGHT flashlights or lanterns. The walk across the lava can be pretty treachorous and it's not paved, only marked with reflectors.

I forgot to develope the pics of us at the rim of Kiluea's caldera. There are sulphur pits and steam vents all over the place, and you can walk right up to (or over!) the edge of the caldera if you want. You can' t see any lava inside there, but it's a VERY spectacular view. I can't even begin to guess how wide it actually was, the scale is just so phenomenal. There's also a lava tube that's about 30 feet in diameter and 300 feet long that you can walk through.

You really need to see the video we took to really get some scale of everything. Of course, even that won't prepare you...

If you choose to go to the telescopes, don't pay the 150 bucks for the guided tour. In dry weather (it was about 80 degrees at the top for us with no precip), you can make it easily in a 4x4. And the drive from Hilo or Kona is only about an hour, plus the half hour adjustment at the Onizuka Visitor's Center. You can easily spend a half hour there, so make time for that.

MrPex