Pele is considered to be the goddess of Hawaii's volcanoes. Herb Kawainui Kane developed a widely used pictorial characterization of Pele.
The Kilauea caldera can be seen from many parts of the park. Here's a picture of the caldera from the Jagger museum.
We also visited the museum at night. We could see the red glow of lava in the caldera.At the Jagger museum there was a display describing the formation of the Hawaii Islands. The Pacific plate (and therefore the islands) are moving northward at a rate of about 4 inches per year. There is a "hot spot plume" below the surface. As an island moves away from the hot spot (i.e. further north), it loses volcanic activity. The most northern islands, Kauai and Oahu have no volcanic activity. Here's the picture from the museum:
Along the rim road we also stopped to see the steam vents. The steam vents occur where water seeps into the ground and comes in contact with molten lava below the surface. The water vaporizes and comes up as steam.
There are also places where the SO2 level is fairly high. The smell is easily detected. Vents where high levels of SO2 escape grow yellow sulfur crystals. They're really neat looking. Almost looks like yellow teeth.
The National Park also has an art gallery. The building that houses the art gallery used to be a hotel. Mark Twain stayed there.
From the Crater Rim Drive we took the Kilauea Iki Hike. It's a 4 mile hike and took us about 2 hours. The worst part was the last uphill climb. From the upper rim, the area we're going to hike looks neat.
The Kilauea caldera from the hiking trail is impressive looking.
Here we start off across the lava covered bottom of the crater.
The landscape is very interesting.
The Volcano National Park is a great place - there are a lot of sites. We stayed busy for about 2 days at the park and didn't see everything. Our only disappointment was NO LAVA FLOW. Maybe next time. 
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