Aloha & Mahalo

Quick note before you go through this post. Some of my comments are not matching up with the pictures. I have no idea why it is doing this. I have spent a lot of time trying to get it to match up, only for it to completly screw up another area. I am not sure what is going on, so at this point I am going to just post these and hope that you can guess and line up to the right picture with the right comment. It can be like a game. I am also going to break it up into 2 posts. Kind of sucks because pictures I wanted to post didn't get posted. So I am going to upload all of them to facebook as well so you can view them ALL there.

Have fun.

Hawaii is always an amazing time, but this year had to be one of the best. We did a lot more, but we also did not leave the Island, where the previous years we took a quick flight to explore another Island which only gave us about 4 days to cram it all in. Since we were on the Big Island last year and loved it, we were a little more familiar and knew for sure what we wanted to do and that we wanted to stay on this Island the whole time.

We did have a nice room on the resort, but we were anxious to have the exploring begin. We did take a volcano excursion and loved it because our guide, cousin Greg, was very knowledgeable and fed our craving for information about the Big Island. We rented a car on Monday and took a drive to South Point again where we headed to the Green Sand Beach which turned out to be a 6 mile hike round trip in crazy wind and dust flying in our face. We also saw the black beach by accident or wrong directions, and then more driving from one side of the Kahala Forest Reserve to the other side. Last but not least we drove back to the Volcano National Park and hiked into a caldera as well as drove down the Chain of Craters Rd, details will be given below with the pictures so sit back and relax as we take you on a nice trip to The Big Islan of Hawaii.

The journey begins....



Happy Couple in paradise again.








The view from our lani's




The only time we laid out by the pool and it was windy so a little chilly.





The walk to get to the beach. Don't walk on the lava rocks barefoot...super sharp.



Jason taking in the beauty of the ocean and how little we really are compared to it.




On Friday we headed to Volcano National Forest and stopped at this steam vent. Very HOT!!!





From the NPS.GOV website, "There is a 150m (520 ft) wide active vent in Halemaʻumaʻu Crater that is emitting a gas and steam plume viewable from Jaggar Museum and the Kīlauea Overlook (and other caldera viewing areas in the park)."







The view of the Kilauea Iki Crater and that pile that has red on it is what was the Pu'u Pua'i cinder cone. We saw people walking below and knew...we're coming back here to hike down there. And we did, you'll see coming up.









We are about to enter Thurston Lava Tube.



























Banyan Tree's, they're everywhere in Hawaii and grow crazy big and have very long vines that you can swing on. Through Hilo there are signs at the bottom of the trees to show who planted each one. This one was planted by Babe Ruth.
























Then we headed to Rainbow Falls. The steps will lead you to the top of the falls and more cool looking trees like the one below.















We also went on a whale watch cruise. I did take some medicine to help me not get sea sick. It worked for the most part. I didn't hurl, so I think it worked.

This was the baby whale, just seemed to wave to us with the tail.

This was the male companion that did breech and this is what I got.





Baby breaching. See that peak in the distance, that's Mauna Loa, I believe it's the earth's largest active volcano. YIKES...they say it will erupt again some day - Look how massive that thing is!!

Next up, we stopped on our way to Green Sand Beach, at the Painted Church, which is a Catholic Church. It began in early 1842. It was nice to see the painting and the care of the surrounding property.