MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1983 - Mississippi Years

Travel (continued)

Hawaii (continued)

While on Kauai, Nancy, Dale, and I took a helicopter ride over the beautiful road-inaccessible areas. It was a spectacular ride. Later when we were on Hawaii, Dale and I again took a helicopter ride over the volcano area. Neola and Ralph went along on this ride. Dale was an Earth Science teacher in the Maryville Junior High School so he had a big interest in the eruption of the Kilauea. On our first trip to Hawaii, the Kilauea volcano was inactive and we could stand on the rim and look down into the caldron and we had swum on a black sands beach not far away. In 1983, Kilauea erupted and has been active ever since. The black sands beach is no more. The helicopter flew over the rim of the cauldron and we could see the bubbling lava. The helicopter followed the flow path which from the sky looked like a wide black frozen river. As we followed it down to the ocean there were occasional holes in the black crust where we could see molten lava. When we got to the ocean, there was a continuous rising of steam as the lava flowed into the water.