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It was almost like a twilight picnic before a rock concert. People milled about carrying backpacks, coolers and baskets. Flashlight beams swung in arcs across the path. Shouts, cheers and chatter added to the carnival-like atmosphere.

A young woman pulled a marshmallow from her knapsack, skewered it with a stick and thrust it toward the orange glow. Roasting marshmallows in a national park is hardly unusual, but this woman was cooking hers over lava—scorching hot magma, molten rock—rising from 40 miles inside Earth.

About 400 of us were gathered here on a Friday in mid-July to watch the latest eruption of Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. As of press time Tuesday, the Mother's Day Flow, named for May 12, the day it started, was still close enough for spectators to make s'mores. But since my visit, the lava has marched down to the sea—about a 20-minute walk from the end of Chain of Craters Road, which was cut off by the flow, said Mardie Lane, a ranger at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It is creating spectacular vistas of dangerous, fiery spray as liquefied rock heated to 2,100 degrees oozes, drips and streams into the Pacific.

It's been seven years since Kilauea treated the public to such a close encounter. But because lava is notoriously fickle, experts can't predict how long the Mother's Day Flow will continue. For now, the spectacle is drawing thousands of locals and visitors—4,200 on one recent night, according to a National Park Service tally.

Kilauea has a long history of activity. In the last 50 years it has erupted 34 times, and the Puu Oo cinder cone on its east flank—the one causing the current fuss at the Mother's Day, Boundary and HALP flows—has been spewing lava continually since 1983, adding 525 acres of grayish-black rock to the 4,021-square-mile Big Island. (The HALP flow was named for a U.S. Geological Survey global positioning system unit in the path of the lava.) The Mother's Day Flow alone has created eight acres of new land since it hit the ocean on July 19.

This eruption of Kilauea was a bonus on my first visit to Hawaii. My husband, Barry, his son, Jann, and I had come to Kapoho, a small beach settlement on the less-touristed southeast coast about 30 miles south of Hilo, as guests of Barry's sister Debbie Lapides; her husband, Murray; and their 6-year-old daughter, Alexandra. The Lapideses had rented an ocean-front house for the summer. We had nothing more remarkable planned than the usual vacation activities: bodysurfing at Waipio Beach on the northeastern side of the island, snorkeling with green sea turtles and lazing in a hammock while sipping POG, a mix of passion fruit, orange and guava juices.

During our weeklong stay, we learned that there's more to this place than just the bliss of its beaches. You can get an astronomy lesson on Mauna Kea, one of the world's tallest volcanoes; sleep on Kilauea's rim, hike its caldera and poke around a creepy cave; and even have a sophisticated meal in a town called—what else?—Volcano.

The Big Island's location makes it a bubbling caldron of volcanic superlatives. The southernmost of Hawaii's major islands, it sits on a magma spout in the center of the Pacific plate and the "Ring of Fire," a misshapen line of volcanic activity that encircles the Pacific Ocean.

The island is home to the world's tallest mountain, Mauna Kea—32,000 feet if you measure from its base on the sea floor—and the most massive one, Mauna Loa, at 10,000 cubic miles. But Kilauea, rising 4,200 feet just a few miles northeast of where we stood, is the star of the island, the most temperamental and the one drawing crowds.

We started our volcanic explorations at Mauna Kea, Kilauea's dormant sister, a rust-colored mountain slightly northeast of the center of the island. Astronomers adore Mauna Kea, which rises far from light-polluting cities and where clouds stay well below the summit.

On the volcano's summit ridge, 11 nations operate 11 state-of-the-art telescopes, some of the world's most powerful.

We had driven up from Hilo on Saddle Road, which bisects the Big Island and straddles Mauna Kea to the north and Mauna Loa, its more active and shorter?by 119 feet?sister peak to the south. Most major rental car companies don't allow two-wheel-drive cars on Saddle Road, presumably because of its rough condition. We were in Murray's four-wheel-drive Pathfinder (he had had shipped it from the mainland to avoid the cost of renting a car), and we found the road passable.

The unsigned turn for the road up Mauna Kea is easy to miss, and we did, but we retraced our path, found the turn and began the steep climb. We kept an eye on the car's heat gauge as the needle nosed into the danger zone.

After an hourlong stop at the visitors center to acclimate to the altitude, Barry, Murray and I climbed back into the Pathfinder. (Debbie and the kids stayed at the center; children 16 and younger and people with cardiac and respiratory problems are advised to stay off the summit because its oxygen-scarce air can pose health risks.)