Airbear wrote:Great stuff Tim. I love the tree tunnel and the avatar pic. I wonder if Hawaiians feel kind of puny when they see all that molten rock oozing and consider that Mother Nature will probably have some more big surprises to show at some time in the future.
ps: What if the wrong end of the island falls off?
Actually, it's not Ma Nature: Hawaiian legend has it that the goddess Pele lives in the volcano, and the destruction is evidence of her anger. Seems she's angry a lot, lately...
We joke that this place is like a disaster theme park, with all the volcanos, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, drought, plagues of rodents etc. Just another day in (cough) "paradise"! There's no telling what would happen should the south end of the island drop into the ocean, the seabed is actually tilting under the weight of the island as the volcanos add new land... Geologic features that used to be underwater on the north end of the island are now several feet above the high tide mark
...and the black sand beach was slowly sinking into the ocean, as evidenced by the palm trees growing below the high tide level: Kalapana the way it was:
Here is the lava flow approaching town:
and a beforeand after shot of the main store /cafe in Kalapana:
