The lava flows remained quiet at Kīlauea on Tuesday morning, but recent spectacular eruptions have highlighted a new challenge.
As the summer visitor season gets into full swing, changes are on the way to solve traffic gridlock.
The rumble of construction continues at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park as excavators make way for a new roundabout at the park's main entrance.
Right now, drivers pay at the park entrance and immediately hit a detour onto a one-lane gravel road.
"You can drive through the Kīlauea Visitor Center parking lot or turn left before the parking lot, and that kind of puts a bottleneck at the entrance of the park," spokesperson Jessica Ferracane explained.
Caroline Clarke said the construction confused her when she entered the park for her first time, but she made it to the newly reopened Uēkahuna overlook, which was windy when we found her there last Thursday.
"We did get a little turned around because we could see it from the main road when we were coming in, and then kind of got rerouted onto the Crater Rim Drive," Clarke said.
The detour does cause some stop-and-go traffic, like over Memorial Day weekend when lava fountains shot up over 1,100 feet and the traffic backup spilled out onto the main highway.
"That was sort of a perfect storm of chaos at the entrance. It was stop-and-go coming into the park, but it was also holiday Sunday. It was graduation for a lot of local schools, and the eruption really started to go off around 4:30 in the afternoon," Ferracane said.
Inside the park, cars and pedestrians crowded the sides of the roadways.
"As soon as they see that glow, they want to pull over and park right then and there, so we had a ton of people who were parking at weird, illegal angles at Volcano House, at the entrance there," Ferracane told HPR.
"As soon as they get to Steam Vents, which is very close to the park entrance, they pull off and park illegally on the side of the road. Some of them were blocking one of the lanes of traffic there with their bumpers or whatever."
Just a mile up the road, Ferracane said the ball field near Kilauea Military Camp had plenty of open parking.
"Some strategies for the next eruption are more of those solar signs, the electric signs that say 'more parking ahead' and some more staffing, hopefully, to help mitigate that."
The detour is expected to last up to another seven weeks, but Ferracane said it’ll make the park a lot easier to navigate.
"That roundabout is going to vastly improve safety in the park and make it a lot easier for people to enter the park, for them to leave it, and to find their way around the park."
The roundabout is scheduled to be finished in September. Park officials urge drivers to slow down and stay alert.
Meanwhile, construction also continues at the Kīlauea Visitor Center, which is closed for renovations until next summer. A temporary welcome center is open at the Kilauea Military Camp.
Check the Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park website for the latest visitor information and the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory website for eruption information.
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