Sulfur in the Morning

There are very few groceries that prompt me to get up in the morning and walk 2 miles to the nearest convenience store. Diet Dr. Pepper is one of them. I rolled out of bed this morning with a minor headache knocking on my temples (which was funny because Nick and I were the only ones who opted NOT to drink last night at the Lava Lounge) and stumbled into the bathroom one zombie step at a time. Braaainn-I mean, soddda, I need sooooda.

                I had already decided this morning was going to be devoted to photography but the caffeine headache and the twitchy eyes more or less decided my route. That being said, it wasn’t like there was nothing to see on the road to the KMC military base and its tiny holy grail of a mini mart- we had walked this path last night on the way to the Lounge and Matt had pointed out several trails that were worth exploring further. Yeah, see, I reasoned with myself, it’s not a total surrender to soda. There were things to see. Photos to take. Shit to explore. Yeah.

                I skulked out of the house with my camera before my room mates even really realized I was going somewhere and hit the road. The sun was up and the sky had opted to cooperate by settling into that brilliant, cloudless blue that is its default when it isn’t raining (which is the norm) or voggy (also a norm.) Kilauea smoked and smoldered to my left and I detoured for a couple of minutes to watch the plume escaping from the floor of the massive caldera. 

Kilauea continues to smolder in the morning sun while the great shield volcano, Mauna Loa, sits impassively in the background.

After ten more minutes of walking, the trail unceremoniously dumped me across from the visitor center. I opted to forgo the assembled tourists and instead, cut around the building and to the right. If I continued to walk straight, following the road, I would eventually reach KMC. But, as Matt had pointed out last night, and as the multitude of signs proclaimed, I was coming up on the entrance to the Sulfur Bank Trail. I don’t know what was more exciting- the word ‘sulfur’ or the numerous warning signs that covered the start of the loop.

Steam vents, earth cracks, AND cliffs? Oh, happy day!

Indeed, as I soon discovered, half the draw of the sulfur banks seemed to be not just the cool chemical/geological phenomenon taking place several feet from the trail, but the danger said area posed to the unwary tourist. I think this one took the cake:

It's actually quite a terrifying illustration in and of its own right, isn't it? Looking at this, you’d expect me to be picking my way through a veritable lava mine field, replete with a Mordor-esque sky in the background and man-devouring cracks ready to swallow half of me in one go. 

This is what Sulfur Banks actually looked like:

Kinda peaceful, actually, if you don't mind the smell of sulfur in the morning.

Cracks in the earth extend down to the magma in the Caldera. Gases, like sulfur, escape from these cracks and emerge from vents in the landscape where they stunt plant growth and color the rocks with mineral deposits.

I cruised around the Sulfur Banks, following a nice boardwalk of a trail, only to find that it dumped me back on the main road anyway. People in passing cars looked at me a little oddly as I hitched my backpack (still smelling a little like sulfur) and struck out on the (typically) cars-only road. I don't know about you, but this has to be one of the nicest commutes to a mini mart. Ever.

Oh don't mind me, guys. Just going shopping.

Rods and Cones

First: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGiX9qTrfnE
Or: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L73OLaG4_kA

Now.
Have a sun set over the Kilauea Caldera.

I thought I arrived too late to catch the actual sun in the sky

I was wrong

                                       

From the Waldron Ledge, looking out

The Caldera at night (45 second exposure)

Mordo- I mean, the Caldera again (2 minute exposure)

Bell Pepper and Wine, A Potato and Beer

What is it about field biologists that makes us head immediately for the alcohol aisle of a grocery store like it's got some kind of magnetic hold on us? From Colorado to Peru without fail, within seconds of entering a store the entire field crew will be perusing the wine/beer selection however expensive or meager it is. It was the same deal yesterday, when Daphne, Liz, Anicka, and I veritably burst into the small grocery store on the military base of Volcano National Park.
Without a car at our disposal, the walk to said store had taken us about half an hour and still ranks as one of the coolest grocery treks of all time. From our cabin, you take a trail which skirts around the rim of the caldera before plunging 'inland', into a veritable plain of tall dry grass and pockmarked by steam vents. We had hiked through this area in the customary early evening rain, and the sight of the giant clouds of steam rising into the darkening sky had been enough to make us stop and watch them for a while. The rains had chased most of the tourists away and so it was really just us at one point, standing silent in the middle of a rather alien landscape. You know. Just on our way to do some shopping.
The main impetus for this expedition for my crew mates had been beer. And wine. I just wanted some Diet Dr. Pepper. Not even a day out here for Liz and I, and less than a week for Daphne and Anicka, and we were all craving our respective poisons.It was not a very promising start for what promises to be a long, tedious haul of a field season.

Let me back up.

If anyone thought losing all my stuff in the Nanay in Peru would be the end of my field adventures, think again. This time, however, I applied for a job a little closer to home- a three month field stint on the Big Island of Hawaii, a convenient 45 minute plane flight from home. The study is officially entitled 'The Demographics of Hawaiian Forest Birds" but in lay man's terms all this means is populations- what's there, how big are the populations, where do individuals go, and is disease prevalent or not. This entails a lot of mistnetting and a lot of bleeding which are two of my favorite things to do in the field. It will also mean a lot of telemetry work. For those unfamiliar with the term, this means attaching a little backpack radio transmitter to target species and then going out into the forest with the receiver and seeing if we can pick up the signal so we know where they go on a day to day basis. And that's the study in a nutshell- disease, telemetry, banding, wet mornings, and black coffee.

But like all field projects, this one is taking a while to get off the ground. With Liz and I arriving on the evening of the 31st, the entire crew was finally assembled all together in one place- in a three room field house in the Volcano National Park. But this wasn't an indication that we could finally get things rolling. On the contrary, the next couple of days have been designated for a variety of menial paperwork, safety training, and a mandatory driving course- in short, the boring, day wasting, mind numbing process necessary to launch a field season on the right foot. This wouldn't be an issue if it was handled correctly, but for some unknown reason (probably Eben's schedule), the routine has been spread out over four long days. Yesterday was paperwork day- which took all of 20 minutes and then we were free to...well, to grocery shop. Which is how we found ourselves buying beer and Diet Dr. Pepper in the evening with Liz and Daphne tried to counterbalance their alcohol purchases with some produce (Liz- beer and a potato, Daphne- wine and a bell pepper). Points for effort, but it just made their checkout all the more awkwardly hilarious. Dinner at our house, courtesy of Eben and his wife, meant a lot of chicken, home made salsa, bread, and salad, followed by ice cream and cookies. And then, before we all sank into an inevitable food coma, we hauled ourselves out of our chairs and walked down to the caldera where you can see the glow of the lava, burning hot and virulent in the night.

Today was supposed to be 'defensive driving' day- a promised 4 hour video on driving and driving safety followed by an online test which, upon completion, would give us the authority to drive government vehicles to our field site. But, what should have been a simple (if brain numbing) exercise quickly dissolved into chaos when no one's laptop would load the driving software. It took almost two hours of trial and error and IP checks and restarting computers before Eben told us to get out of there and take the rest of the day off. For lack of anything better to do.
Back to the field house. Time to lie out in the sun, crack open a beer, and watch the apapane fly by overhead.
Nick demonstrated he didn't need defensive driving by loading up Grand Theft Auto on our arthritic PS2 and proceeding to run into lamp posts, hookers, and cop cars alike.
Shower time.
Sunset over the volcanoes.
Possibly karaoke later tonight.
Will keep you posted.