The Thurston Lava Tube is located in Volcano National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii, in the state of Hawaii. This natural formation lets you walk within a tube that once flowed with molten lava!
Now this is a location with a dual personality. The first half is the "big tour" area. You walk down a short jungly path with birds, rich foliage. Then there's a yawning cave mouth! This is the lava tube. When the lava flowed here, the outside cooled down and got hard. The inside kept flowing. When the lava stopped flowing, the tube emptied out.
Here is the entrance to the mouth of the lava tube.
There are lights down the first half, so you can see how intriguing the sides are. But it gets better.
Halfway down the tube are stairs up - and a gate that warns you that the second half of the tube is not lit. We brought flashlights!! Many people commented as we went through the gate that they wished they had brought flashlights. It was SO cool leaving the crowd behind and going down the dark half of the tube. Neat and a bit scary for me - once you got down the tube a bit, it was completely dark forward and back. There were no bats, no spiders, no insects. It was just dark ... dark and smooth. If you turned off your lights (which of course we did) it was pitch black.
We finally reached a point where the roof was coming down and I didn't want to go further. Bob ventured even further ahead to see how far it went, and he didn't get to the end before he was out of sight of my light and came back to me. Very fun!
When we got back to the stair area, once again people were surprised to see us down in the "dark area" and wished they'd brought lights, and asked us what we'd seen. So lesson to the wise - bring flashlights with you! It is well worth it.
Here is a view from inside the "dark area" back towards where all the masses of people are exiting.
The lava tube is definitely worth going through - and make sure you bring a flashlight and hiking shoes!
