Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Roadside lava tube - Queen Kaahumanu Highway


One unexpected stop on our February 2014 visit to Hawaii was at a lava tube beside Queen Kaahumanu Highway just south of Kekaha Kai State Park and north of the Kona airport.  During our excursions, we noticed a number of vehicles parked along side the road in the area so we stopped to see what was there.  We found a 200 foot long section of a lava tube on the mountain side of the highway.  We decided to explore a bit as shown in the pictures below.

The lava tube is about ten feet high at the visible entrance

Broken rocks litter the floor of the tube

Looking through the tube at light streaming in from the far entrance

The tube contained a jumble of rocks with flow patterns

A better view of the far entrance from inside the tube

A section of the floor slab could have been cut by a saw, but wasn't

Additional small tubes radiate out from the main one

Looking back toward the highway

The is no fee to visit the lava tube.  There is no website about it either, but it does appear on USGS topographic maps.

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