Hippies are OK sometimes. Volcanoes rule!

Joanna writes:

Well, we had a couple of fairly unhappy days here in Pahoa when everything on the "farm" (we've found that there are, in fact, a few crops, but I wouldn't really call it a farm) seemed to be decaying (vehicles, structures, plants, fruit, children), and a rain storm kept us from even going down to the beach, and stoned hippies were lecturing us about life and being generally unpleasant, but we stuck it out, and things are much better now. Yesterday we somewhat apprehensively followed the advice of the others on the farm and went to a weekly drum circle on a black sands beach about 6 miles away. It was gorgeous. Even just the road to the beach was spectacular, and the beach itself was lovely, too, very crowded with people in various stages of undress (this is a clothing optional beach) and children and dogs running around. The drumming was pleasant, and mostly people were just hanging out and swimming. The water was a bit hard to get into and out of, due to a large number of rocks, but it was totally worth it, as I got to swim with dolphins! Awesome.

Before coming to Pahoa, we rented a car and went to Volcano National Park, where we stayed at a beautiful free campground. The current lava flow is a 3.5 mile hike over the 2003 flow that took out a road and a town. It was actually really beautiful and fun to hike over the interesting lava formations, and we got to see the lava flowing into the sea a couple hundred yards away. Not as close as you can get sometimes, but quite spectacular nonetheless.