Tour the Island

Island of Hawaii
Friday, October 13^th, 2000

Near the Saddle Between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa

We first traveled over the lava flow, then came to the ranch lands.
This is part of the largest cattle ranch in the world.

A Crater in a Caldera

The Saddle Road passes very near this crater. There are many craters on these volcanos, not just one per mountain. Because of the mountains all around, it's difficult to know what the orientation of this picture should be. If the horizon were to be made level to the horizontal plane, much of the photo information would be lost.

Left: The road slides by another crater as we head east toward the summit and out of the rain shadow of the mountain. This crater is surrounded by forest. There is some reflection from the window in this picture and some vog. That is something like fog, but smoke from the volcano is the source of most of the gray cloudiness.

Right: Another crater is surrounded by lava flow of pãhoehoe or smooth roppy lava. This one looks as if it was a shaft directly to the center of the earth. Maybe it was.