Warm greetings all! 🙏 💚

Early this afternoon a few of us from The Sanctuary of The Blue Dragon drove down to the corner of The Red Road/Kalapana-Kapoho (Beach) Road/Route 137 (it goes by multiple names) and Route 130, in Kalapana, where usually one or two vendors are often set up. We went there today to go to Vidyapapi's stand to get some fruit, and some of his special ginger and Krishna tulsi elixirs.

Once we finished our business with Vidyapapi, I decided that I wanted to go for a short walk out onto the lava field (from the 1988 eruption), which was right behind the area where the vendors are. I love going out onto the lava, as it's a totally different world. The type of lava here is mostly pāhoehoe, which comes out of the ground a lot hotter and moves much more quickly (it looks like water) than the other type of lava out here, ʻaʻā, which is sharp and chunky.

This is the view from the corner, where the vendors often are, out onto the truly massive expanse of lava.

Notice the water-like quality of pāhoehoe lava. At the corner, on the edge of the flow, plants have begun to grow more densely, build soil, and slowly cover the lava.

This is a really happy looking noni tree,Morinda citrifolia, growing in the lava on the edge of the flow. Noni is a very common and very medicinal plant (both leaves and fruit) that grows all over the place here.

This is the way we took to get up onto the lava flow.

This is one of many large cracks in the lava, that sometimes go quite deep. One word of advice, don't fall in the cracks.

Looking out into the vast expanse of lava.

The surface of the lava is slowly eroding, creating even more beautiful patterns.

This very small adult specimen (basically a natural bonsai) of an African tulip tree, Spathodea campanulata, caught our eye, growing out of a crack in the lava.

The forms, textures, and colors are as beautiful as they are diverse. Natural art.

This small shrub is Pluchea carolinensis, another local medicinal with common names like cure-for-all, camphor bush, stink bush, and sour bush, alluding to the strong smell of camphor of the leaves.

Austin and Odeline came out onto the lava with me.

There are sometimes amazing layers of different colors visible where the lava breaks.

A young ohia, Metrosideros polymorpha, an endemic colonizers of new lava flows, can be seen in the left of this shot.

People plant coconut palms, Cocos nucifera, everywhere, even out on the lava. There are areas close by that have thousands of coconut palms planted out on the lava.

More amazing, twisting, folding, knotted forms. Pure works of art everywhere out here!

This is the same African tulip tree from earlier, seen again as we ended our short lava jaunt, and walked back to our car.

I really hope that y'all find these images as beautiful and amazing as I did when I took them!

Thank you all so much for allowing me to share more of the beauty and magic from my life and my world with you, and for your continuous appreciation and support! I am deeply grateful! 🙏 💚

*Image created by @doze.