This year our trip to Scandinavia was derailed by the flu and whilst we have received a full refund from our airlines we remain completely dissatisfied...We wanted to go on our trip! Alas, it can't happen, and there's no definitive indication on when that may happen...So, Faith and the G-dog are stuck at home instead of travelling the world.
Last night we were watching a documentary about the Australian outback, a place we are very familiar with, and we ended up chatting about some trips we want to take next year, road trips with camping and off-roading. We're looking forward to it! But that doesn't scratch the itch when it comes to some of the amazing places we want to see around the world.
We also chatted about a few wish-list places we'd like to go in the world and I'd like to share one we would both love to see someday.
Volcanoes National Park
When we think of this place we think about fountains of molten rock, of red-hot lava bubbles popping out of a river of fire that creeps along the scorched, blackened ground consuming everything in its path. We think of the rising heat haze rippling up from the lava flow and the eerie glow of red and orange against the dark night sky. We can almost smell the toxic gases that billow up from the sea as the lava pours itself over craggy cliffs and down into the steaming water, almost hear the hiss of cold water meeting molten magma.
This isn't an alien landscape, rather an extreme environment found here on Earth, only fifty kilometres from the Hawaiian town of Hilo.
Here you will find two of the most active volcanoes in the world, *Kilauea and Mauna Loa, still creating one of natures most violent and beautiful spectacles after seventy million years of existence.
I have always wanted to see lava flow with my own eyes, to feel the heat and smell the toxic fumes - To feel close to such an extreme and awesome act of nature; One that can be so devastating and destructive, but in turn life-giving. When these volcanoes erupted and spewed-forth their molten lava they birthed the Hawaiian Islands; They continue to shape the eight large islands and 124 or so smaller islands and atolls that spread across the two thousand six hundred kilometres of the central Pacific Ocean through above ground eruptions and from the ocean floor also.
Watching lava flow is fascinating to me...I mean on TV as I've never seen it in real life. It moves slowly, but inexorably downwards taking all in its path and it's beautiful to watch; The way the molten rock glows at its hot centre and goes dark where it begins to cool is captivating; It flows for some 30 kilometres before it begins to cool and lose it's glow, but it's still incredibly hot at that point. It begins at around 1100°C at its eruption point and is still molten-hot when it meets the sea and cools.
When volcanoes erupt they throw lava and ash high into the air and for kilometres around the summit. The Hawaiian volcanoes are a little different though; They are called fissure volcanoes which means they have a regular flow of magma instead of the explosive eruptions that occur due to the volatile gases of other volcanoes.
The hot magma of a fissure volcano begins some eighty kilometres beneath the Earth's surface where vast pools of magma (molten rock), in a part of the Earth called the mantle, are pushed upwards by currents of heat. Naturally the pressure builds beneath the volcano and eventually forces the magma through fissures on the Earth's crust to burst through the volcanoes summit and flow down from there.
Who wouldn't want to see that?!
Faith and I have walked within the Undara Lava Tubes in the far-north of Queensland, Australia...These huge tubes many, many times taller than a man, are formed by flows of lava similar to those above. The lava flows into creeks and rivers and keeps flowing for years...Eventually the crust cools but the lava keeps flowing within. Over many years tubes are formed and when the magma stops flowing inside and exists completely a hollow tube is left. They are spectacular to behold. Of course, those flows were millions and millions of years ago and we can't go back to see them happen...But we can go to the Volcanoes National Park and see this process happening with our own eyes.
I'll be honest, Faith and I have had the privilege of seeing some amazing places and things around the world and, no matter how much we see, our appetite isn't sated.
The Volcanoes National Park is just one more place on our wish-list and whilst we don't know if we will ever get there or not, we work towards it and hope that someday we will have the chance.
Do you have any places you wish to see with your own eyes? If so, what attracts you to it and why do you want to go there? Feel free to share your wish-list places in the comments below. 👇
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised.
Be well
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