The Kahuku unit is a recently acquired area of the park some 100 km away from Kilauea near South Point of the Big Island of Hawai’i – and I haven’t been there at all before! This saturday was the last chance, and Ranger John Stallman was really kind enough to take me out although there was an emergency to change the seismograph paper at Jaggar Museum the same day – and it always needs to be done before 2 pm local time due to them working on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

So we were off early in the morning and took the Ford Explorer SUV to make it all the way to the end of the dirt roads. He wanted me to show the forested pit crater with a lot of cool rare stuff in there, as there is no access for large animals or humans, and we were on the hunt for the rare yellow Lehua flower, as well. The pit crater was a relatively easy hike through the park-like landscape that used to be the large Kahuku Ranch, which really did a lot of damage to the native environment but left this wide meadows with some Ohia and Koa trees remaining, and great views all the way down to South Point with the wind farm.

The Lehua flowers in yellow proved to be a bit more difficult – red was abundant, and in a flower density unmatched at Kilauea, apparently due to the different climate. We found some high trees with yellow blossoms hard to see on our way down from our upper area, and a few orange Lehua blossoms right next to the abandoned air strip near the entrance to Kahuku, but we did not give up yet – there was a small trail leading to a very green grassy patch behind a volcanic hill on the southern flank of Mauna Loa, and we almost covered the Jeep in grass getting up there: But here it was, a small and wind-distorted Lehua tree in full yellow bloom.

Thanks, John, for this great adventure and showing me around the Kahuku unit. The change and devotion that goes to the restoration of this place is apparent, and I am really curious what it will look like in a few years from now, if you can see the change already after only 2 years with the park. Mahalo!