The Big Island Adventure

Tuesday morning we woke up bright and early to get on our way to Hilo. As luck would have it, we left a BEAUTIFUL day on Oahu so that we could enjoy even more rain and chill on the Big Island. Who's idea was to go this island anyway?! Hahaha, nah, it was way fun... just wish the sun woulda come out on our North Shore day instead! So on the plane, we took some pictures of Oahu from above. Here's Diamond Head Crater (in case I haven't mentioned it enough, we hiked here earlier in the trip).

We landed in some cold-ish weather and waited for Jason to pick up our sweet ride :) It was nice and roomy for all 6 of us. At least everyone got their own seat and then some! We even let Flat Alix take a turn at driving... riiiiiiight. We just let her have a feel at the drivers seat.

Our first stop: Akaka Falls. Rain, rain, rain is mostly what we saw. Two umbrellas, two kids, 4 adults. Well, we at least managed to keep the kids and the mother mostly dry. When we got to the falls we told dad to take a picture. He said, OK! ...where is it? His picture turned out to be a blur of mist and water. You should look at Jason's recap of this day to see what the falls are supposed to look like.

We took the scenic route on the way to our next destination. It was pretty scenic indeed and included these cliffs on the way.

Next up was Rainbow Falls. No rainbow to be found here. In fact, the water looks a little... dirty.

Flat Alix keeping dry. This is one of my favorite Flat Alix pictures :)

Then we went to look at the boiling pots, which weren't as cool as I was hoping, but it had a pretty view of Pe'epe'e falls (no, not peepee falls...). I bet it would look even lovelier with the sun out and a nice blue sky.

Later that day, after going to the grocery store and dropping our stuff off at our vacation rental (Hawaiian Retreat), we went to Ahalanui Warm Springs which is naturally heated by the volcano. It was nice. And a little strange. There were warm spots and cold spots... and mostly it was cold on the bottom and warm up top.

Dad finally got to make use of his swim trunks!

Ash had a blast in the water. She practiced floating... and it kinda looks like I'm about to eat her...

And where was Jax? Well, in his usual spot taking a little snooze.

We went back to our place for a cozy meal and all fell asleep by 9:00. But not before we all had a chance to use this all natural feeling shower... Look at J's blog for other pictures of what the place looked like.

Here's the bed I slept in. Both beds had mosquito nets... although I'm not sure there were any mosquitos.

After it rained all night long, we woke up to lovely sunshine. We had a scrumptious breakfast and took off so we could enjoy the sun before it disappeared (which was soon after...) But before we took off, we had a chance to lounge in the hammock.

Our first stop of the day was the State Lava Tree Park. The behind the scenes photo of taking Flat Alix pictures.

Here's the picture. It turned out a little bright so we took a better one after that.

Then we went into Volcanos National Park. We found out that a lot of the park and the roads were closed due to the sulphur dioxide coming out of Kilauea (behind us). Too bad. We still got to see a lot of the park but we didn't get to do some of the small hikes we thought about doing for safety reasons.

One of the hikes we did was to the Lava tubes. It wasn't a difficult hike as some of us wore flip flops.

Inside the lava tube.

We drove along the chain of craters road and saw many craters like this one.

We also found the July 1974 Lava Flow. This is significant for dad since that is the month and year he and mom were married. So naturally we stopped to take a picture. Although to me, all the lava rocks look the same.

At the end of the road was the Holei sea arch.

Our goal was to get to see lava pouring in the ocean. From this point on, it was an 8 mile hike to that smoke you see billowing in the background. So we opted for the drive out of the park and a short 3/4 mile hike to see it from the other side. If we had known this the night before, we could've gone and stayed longer to watch since we had stayed down that way. Oh well.

We drove over and followed the dotted yellow lines to our watching spot.

Unfortunately, they don't let you get any closer than this. So for a long time we waited for the sun to go down so we could see some real action. It was the longest hour ever. Plus we had a plane to catch so we were really cutting our time close!

And look who finally decided to wake up and enjoy the scene! What an adorable little face!

Even Flat Alix got to enjoy the scene for a moment.

Darkness finally approached... finally you can see the lava glowing in the smoke! We had to leave very soon after this but at least we got to see some of it! It was pretty really cool when it got much darker.

We made it to the plane on time where we ate the worst dinner we probably ate this whole trip (jerky and trail mix), and got home where this one passed out for the night. Poor kid.