For Christmas, Grammy took us on a helicopter tour over Volcano National Park. Sarah and I did this on our ten-year anniversary trip a few years and it was a definite for the kids to experience. They were a little nervous and very excited for their first helicopter trip. Not to mention this was the only way we were going to see real flowing lava! The trip was a little bumpy…but not too bad. Very awesome!

Being able to actually see lava flowing into the ocean was....awesome!

We circled around this heavy flow area a few times. On our last circle, we actually saw a large shelf of lava rock crash into the ocean. I was able to capture it, but these images did come out a little blurry. It was very cool to see this!

They call this guy...Volcano Jack. Evidently you can rent this as a bed and breakfast on the Big Island. Not sure I would want to deal with all the vog though.

On the flight back to Hilo we passed over these lava tubes. Most of the tubes flow underground, but here you can see the lava actually flowing through the cracked rock.