Back in the day, the park service actually allowed people to wander out across the lava flow, over the top of the lava tube carrying this lava to the sea, to this point, where it could be observed very well hissing and popping into the cold ocean. About a year after I did that hike, a two and a half acre chunk of coast right where I had been broke off and plunged into the sea. There were a couple of tourists that they never found, and who are likely forever entombed in fresh lava, a la Pompeii.
I still think for me, it was worth the risk.
In the beginning of Hawaiian time... Madame Pele was born in a far-distant land at the edge of the sky. There she lived with her parents until she was grown up, when she married. After a time, and the bearing of children, her husband was “enticed away” by another. The deserted Madame Pele, being ‘much displeased and troubled in mind’ (a.k.a. pissed off), on account of her husband’s indiscrepancy, went in search of him. First, Madame Pele searched the island of Kauai and travelled southeast, finally making her home in Kilauea Volcano on the Big Island. Apparently, though, in this story, she never really resolves the “huhu” she’d had with the husband. - http://goodstuffsworld.blogspot.com/2012/10/hawaii-volcanoes.html
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