Bill-on-the-Hill

If you've waded through the previous days of this, you may be wondering, "So if the whole idea of this outing was to see volcanoes, why call the thread Bill versus the volcano? Seems contrary to the goal." Well, laying aside a certain movie reference, there's a reason, and today's events will begin to explain what it is.

The Laghetto di Fanghi (mud bath) on the island of Vulcano. This photo gives a good sense of what this attraction looks like, but for the smell that remains in your swimsuit once you've immersed yourself, you'll just have to use your imagination...

A sample of what you can see from the boat while circumnavigating the island of Vulcano. I don't know what this is or how you can access it from dry land, but it's pretty...

Bill-on-the-Hill

Fourth day of the trip, and time to start doing what we came for, namely hiking into some weird places -- like, say, the crater of an active volcano.

Elemental sulfur in the orifice of a fumarole on Vulcano. The central rock is about 8 inches in diameter. Just barely visible on the left are one or two little orange dots. These are drops of ''molten'' sulfur produced by the heat of the volcanic activity. You won't find these at many other places on earth -- at least not very many you'd want to hike to.

Inner crater of Gran Cratere, Vulcano. There's a little human dot in the lower-to-middle right-hand part of the photo; that's "D," who's descending a possibly-not-entirely-official trail to the crater bottom -- which was molten lava only about 110 years ago.

On the trail up to Gran Cratere at the top of Vulcano. From left: Emily, WGMIL (World's Greatest Mother-In-Law), D and Z. Lipari island in background. From this point the hike would start to smell bad, and it wasn't because of the hikers ...

Looking into the active crater of Vulcano, in the Aeolian Islands. The trail around the crater is visible on the left.