Chrissy's World - Photos 1, Page 7, Downtown Pahoa

On the way back home from
Ray & Ellen's house, we
stopped at a scenic viewpoint
to, uh, well, look at the
scenery! There was a
radio-controlled airplane flying
around at our level. We
couldn't see anyone driving
so I think it was being
controlled by someone down
below.

This is the scenery we
stopped to look at. We're
looking WNW along the
southeast coast of the island.
If you look real close, you can
see the steam plume from the
lava entering the ocean. It's
on the very far right of the
photo on the left and seen a
little better in the zoomed-in
photo on the right.

These photos were taken at
Whittington Beach Park,
which is just past the pier that
you see in the photo above
left. Just your basic Hawaii
scenery.

This was a big day for pictures. The sun finally came out and it stopped raining (not mutually exclusive)! First, we have
pictures of downtown Pahoa. Don't be fooled by the lack of traffic. Surprisingly, Friday and Saturday nights are
jumping with music coming from the open doors of the bars (2) and restaurants (3 or 4, depending on who's open),
people walking up and down the street, cars cruising the "strip", SRO at Luquin's Mexican Restaurant with lines out the
doors. It's like Sunset Boulevard, only different. The other batch of pictures are from our drive out into the lava field in
Kaimu-Kalapana area. More on that as we get to it.

East side of the street looking Northeast

East side of the street looking Southeast

Looking Southwest at Raisin' Cane

This was one of the most breath-taking drives we've taken. Both Robin and I were overwhelmed at how beautiful and
intense this drive through the lava was. I marked on the upper map where I took the pictures of the steam cloud. East
Lae'apuki (upper image, bottom left) is where the lava is flowing into the ocean, creating the huge steam plume that's
visible for miles. This is at the intersection of the Pahoa-Kalapana Road (Rt. 130) and the Kapoho-Kalapana Road (Rt.
137) toward our house. We pass this intersection practically every day coming and going so we're always up-to-date on
the status of the steam cloud. At a guess, I would say the distance from our house to the lava flow is roughly 10 miles,
though I've never measured it. This day, we drove out the cyan line (upper map, dark purple line lower map) through
the lava field until the road ended at around Queen's Bath. On the maps you can see the road layout of the
subdivsion, Royal Gardens, that got wiped out by the lava. There is still a lot of it left, but you can't get there because of
the lava. The street lines that are in the black areas are covered in lava and no longer exist.

Looking Northwest at the west side of the
street. Luquin's Mexican Restaurant is in the
building at the far end. Sort of the "anchor
store" for downtown Pahoa.

Saw this babe walking down the boardwalk.
Picked her up. We had a ball.

I'm not sure where this is, but it
looks like the "Red Road"

Photos 1, Page 7