Album Deserts

there are even deserts on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi
And, of course, the Kaʻu Desert also has a lot of sand

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Kings of Leon sing a song about the Cold Desert.
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When you wear the kids out on the climb out.
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The nephew said he likes the desert now more than the mountains. I still say it is seasonal. He got a good taste though in the short sunshine hours we had.
 
Good on you for exposing those kids to the great outdoors, and for tiring them out!
As we dog people say: "a tired dog is a happy dog" and we took that to heart many years ago with our two teens.
I knew that spot looked very familiar.
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Good on you for exposing those kids to the great outdoors, and for tiring them out!
As we dog people say: "a tired dog is a happy dog" and we took that to heart many years ago with our two teens.
I knew that spot looked very familiar.

That is a good eye!
yeah, when they have to spend half the day in the tent. It is best to run them ragged during the light and warm parts of the day... well, I guess that is true any time of year.
 
The previous were the iphone pics, here are a few more to make one feel warmer.

Just some old rocks
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I like the silhouette's of pinyons and junipers.
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This should also make you feel warmer. When we arrived at the park at 9am, the temp was 12d F in the sun.
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We were just at the location of your third photo in early October.

Did the overcast make some of the shallow ones easier to spot?
It felt like we could see the tracks easier from one direction than the other, since the sun is so low in November.
 
Did the overcast make some of the shallow ones easier to spot?
It felt like we could see the tracks easier from one direction than the other, since the sun is so low in November.
I'll admit we looked pretty extensively and weren't sure we actually saw any of the tracks...
 
I'm 99% certain we walked by these without noticing them. It helps to have a more specific idea of what to look for. Thanks!

Once you see the patterns or find the therapod tracks, you can see there are quite a few.
They are not as distinct as the tracks in some other places, like this one over by Moab.
(after a rain storm)

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I went again and explored the Kaʻu Desert in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes NP.
This barren landscape covered with several lava flows, Peleʻs hair, and volcanic sand and ash from historic explosive events is really fun to explore.
I went on January 31, and a massive magma intrusion happened in the area that day. An enormous earthquake swarm accompanied the magma intrusion, and every 2-5 minutes, a shallow earthquake in the magnitude range of magnitude 2.7 to magnitude 3.5 rattled the area. It does not sound like much, but you feel them all when the earthquakes are only between 0.4 and 0.6 miles below the surface.
It did not bother me too much at all.
After living through the 80K earthquakes during the Leilani eruption in 2018, it was sort of normal to me.
The weirdest part of the magma intrusion was the opening of new ground cracks while exploring the area, and some of the cracks emitted warm air. That was sort of new to me and a couple of times I had to go back and place my hand into the crack so I could confirm that the warm air was coming from there and not from the surrounding area.
While I was exploring the area that day, the whole area was uplifted by 20 inches, and 40 million cubic yards of magma migrated from the crater at the summit into the area during the intrusion. That is about 12,232 Olympic -Size Swimming Pools full of magma in a day!!
It was definitely one of the coolest explorations I ever had in the park.


Accretionary Lava Ball and Puʻu Koaʻe in the upper left corner

The area I explored is part of the Koaʻe Fault system, one of the most active fault systems and the southwest rift zone of Kilauea runs right through the area.

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the view from top of the normal fault down to the sand dunes

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View from below to the fault system: the Koaʻe Fault dropped down about 50-60 feet

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Shelly Pahoehoe of the 1974 lava flow, Kamakaiʻa Hills in the distance

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welcome to Mars

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view towards the fault


Some of the earthquakes while I was exploring:

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The INSAR satellite image from the uplift a few days later:

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I will be going back on Tuesday because I want to hunt for new ground cracks from all the crazy earthquake activity and uplift. This will be a lot of fun.
 
Snow and Slicrock and stuff.

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Home for the night.
No stars, only clouds.
At night there was an owl, during the day there were some canyon wrens with their calls that sound like they are running out of gusto or battery power by the end.
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