By Scott Shephard

I'm not old enough to have been present at The Creation, which happened eons ago. But I can finally say that I did witness the slow and geologic creation of a little more earth - in this case the Big Island of Hawaii.

I have seen videos of lava flows on Hawaii before and while the lava seems dangerous, it also seems deceptively sedate - it has an amazingly warm glow and it seems to move languorously. But when you witness molten lava flowing into the ocean from as close as 50 feet away, it is anything but benign.

The sound of the boiling sea water, the whiff of sulfurous gas and the crash of the waves against the new-formed earth are both fascinating and scary.

The boat ride to this amazing place wasn't exactly easy as we were pounding into 7 foot swells most of the way. And it wasn't cheap, either. But it was certainly worth it.

A few more from our outing . . .

And a short video . . .