Enchanted by the glow of volcanoes

Jeanne Cooper

Updated 3:18 pm, Thursday, September 5, 2013

The dining room at the Volcano House has a wall of tall windows that lets visitors view the spectacular scenery while they enjoy a meal. Photo: National Park Service

If Yelp had existed in 1866, Mark Twain's review of Volcano House - still the only hotel in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park - would no doubt have been marked "useful," "funny" and "cool."

Calling the new lodge "neat, roomy, well furnished and well kept" in a letter published in the Sacramento Union, Twain wrote, "The surprise of finding a good hotel in such an outlandish spot startled me considerably more than the volcano did."

Flash forward to the last decade, and you might have had to click on "filtered reviews" to find such an endorsement. The latest version of Volcano House, built in 1941 after a fire had consumed Twain's lodgings, looked dingy and possibly decrepit when my husband, Ian, and I first visited in 2005 - as it did to actual Yelp reviewers a few years later. Its kitschy gift shop and indifferent buffet merited similar scorn.

Now, after a multimillion-dollar renovation that kept it shuttered for more than three years, the Volcano House has finally got its spark back, and not just in its storied hearth with a carving of Pele, the volcano goddess. Engravings of native birds adorn 33 newly brightened rooms; the dining room, lounge and boutique reflect a commitment to high-quality local sources.

And while the view from the rim of Kilauea's caldera may mesmerize some into warming a window seat, the ever-changing park outside also offers several new enticements to leave it.

SNIP>

For more info and images, go to:

http://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/Enchanted-by-the-glow-of-volcanoes-4790178.php

--