2/25 | Maui:

2/22 | Maui: Hana Highway

Once we landed in Maui it was clear to me that this is the Tropical Paradise that is shown on TV shows and movies.  We had a few hours to kill before we could make ourselves at home at the rental property in Paia, so we decided to head around the Hana Highway. We stopped a lot and looked over the ledge and took in the warm air and shot some pictures.

We had a great guilde book, Maui Revealed, The Ultimate Guidebook, that took us through the Hana Highway by each attraction on every mile marker.  Most of the road fits one car and barely two cars.  We had to squeeze by or move over most of the way.  One of the stops that were in the guide book said to stop at Julie's Best Banana Bread.  I also picked up her homemade Coconut Candy and Taro Chips.  They were so good! I'm glad you can order her items online because we are craving the bread.  We stopped at a few waterfalls and even a spot to snorkel before we headed home for the night.

We stayed in the beautiful Cherry Cottage in Paia. For some reason we didn't take any pictures of this place, but take our word for it, it was beautiful. Two bedrooms and a sleeper sofa, it was perfect for our family of 4.  On our way there from the Hana Highway and thanks to a few of my iPhone Apps I was able to find a local pizza place, place and order for a large pizza that we picked up on the way to our rental.

2/21 | Big Island: Snorkle & Lava

We woke up to our bodies hurting from our Trail of Tears hike and decided that we should snorkel before breakfast and that should make us feel better.  It made us feel great! We felt like we were in a real life Finding Nemo! We saw all of these crazy colorful fish that we usually only see on TV or at aquariums.  Every few seconds one of us was pointing and motioning to each other showing the other one a new fish we found.  It was truly amazing! This was my first time snorkeling and the small tidal pools were comforting to me.  We explored a few different tidal pools and our goal was to see a turtle, but no luck.

We decided to take the locals advice and head out to highway 130 to see the lava, hoping this was going to be a better hike then the day before.  I did some online research and found that this was a successful place to see lava. Again, the guide told us to ignore the signs saying it was closed.  We headed there and saw this vast grey lava field.  We parked among the other cars and headed out with our cameras.  From our car we could see glowing orange lava and started heading that way.  On the way we found a car that was engulfed in lava.  

We were amazed with the lava flows that created different formations.

We could feel the heat as we were getting closer to the fresh lava, it wasn't unbearable and no our shoes were not melting to the ground.  After a 10 min walk we saw a group of people and headed there way because we knew they were looking at something good, and it was.

 

Wow! We were all amazed to see real live flowing lava about 5' away from us. We were taking pictures and feeling the heat. The ground was hot and did puncture an Eco Sense Poland Spring bottle that we put down for a minute or two.  We spent a good amount of time here and took a lot of pictures and a few HD videos of the flow.  The sound of the flow heating up and breaking through the old cold flow was like the sounds of Pop Rocks in your mouth.

We ended our day by driving the scenic route around the Big Island and seeing water falls, beaches etc.

Time to pack up because we are heading to Maui in the morning!

2/20 | Big Island: The Trail of Tears

The night before we heard from a local that at the end of highway 130 you could see flowing lava, but we decided to take a trail to see the Pu’u O’o Crater.  The guide said it was the best hike to do on the island, so of course we needed to do it, right?  John and I read the guide quickly and it said it was a 3 1/2 hike up the trail and to ignore the trail closed signs.  We ditched the book in the car, packed our lunch, three water bottles each and headed up the trail with the boys.  It was very humid and the trail was very muddy.  There wasn't much to see because it was thick jungle.  On the way up we avoided getting muddy and hopped over puddles and used the logs in the trail to guild our way.  We hit the 2 mile marker and was excited that we had an mile and a half to go.  We were soaking wet in our sweat and starting to get tired heading up this steep trail.  We see mile marker 3 and were jumping for joy knowing we only had a half a mile to go. A few times in the trial we had to jump over old cracks in the earth from previous eruptions.  We hit mile marker 4 and were very confused, still not at the top, still not seeing anything, still thick jungle. We hiked about another mile and came to a clearing of miles of jagged lava rock.  This is where I think we could have queued some crickets and then started kicking ourselves for leaving the guide book in the car.

 We watched as a tour attraction helicopter started circling and that gave us a hunch where the Puu Ooo Crater could be and we started in that direction.  We finally saw some other hikers and asked them where the crater was.  They told us it was another mile or so up towards the smoke and fog and pointed and also told us that all you really see is smoke and fog and no lava.  We decided as a family that we were going to skip the extra mile, eat lunch and head back down to the car.

The trail downhill was pretty horrible.  We now had one water bottle each and we were slipping everywhere, a few of us landed on our butts heading down. After we went about 2 miles we were all miserable and our knees, feet, backs and joints were just aching.  This is why we now call this trail "The Trail of Tears." By the time we got to the car we were so grateful and exhausted.

2/19 | Big Island: Hawaii Volcano National Park

John and I woke up to the sun rising and we got some photo ops in before we started our day and we also could see the outside of our rental.  

We realized that the rental was closer to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park then thought.  There were only a few houses between us and that National Park land, but the entrance was a few miles away.  We ventured here and was disappointed that there wasn’t a sign for us to take a picture in front of for the park.  Once we entered the park we went to the visitor’s center, collected our patches and watched a 20 minute movie about the history of the past volcano eruptions.  It was raining off and on, but we still explored the park.  We explored the steam vents and felt the heat coming out of the earth, and took some pictures of the crater at the scenic overlook.  

We drove to the Thurston Lava Tubes and had lunch in one of the tubes that didn’t have any light. 

We continued to drive around the park roads, stopped at the park buildings, took pictures and watched for birds along the way.  There were a few roads that were closed due to recent of past lava flow.

We read in the guide that there was a place called The Steam Vent Inn that had natural steam vent saunas and geo thermo pools.  It said that if you stop by they might let you use them for a price.  We headed that way and met a nice couple that owned this place and gave us a tour and we asked if we could use the saunas.  The owner, Mike, gave let us use it for $10 per person. DEAL!  It was wonderful.  The vents were safe and didn't contain any harmful toxins in the steam like the steam vents closer to the volcano. Mike told us about lava flow at the end of Highway 130 and then we headed into town for some grocery shopping and dinner, then we called it a night.

2/18 | Big Island: Traveling

We left 20 degrees and 3’ of snow behind, three planes and 12-14 hours later we finally got to the Big Island and the heat felt good.  Once we got there we had to drive over 3 hours in the dark to get to our rental home in Pahoa.  The rental property was named Melemele Aloha and the water was across the street.  Our rental wasn’t right on the ocean, but close to it, about 15 steps. It was an amazing place, there was a pool of water in our front yard with fish and we learned that at the high tide the water would come over the road into our yard filling it back up again.  It was pretty cool.  Across the street we had tidal pools made out of lava, it was a marine life sanctuary.  John had a great idea to take flash lights and explore the tidal pools at night.  We got on our water shoes and headed out.  The water is crystal clear; we are not used to that.  In RI we see grey water and can’t see the bottom.  This was amazing.  We could see the fish and sea cucumbers, eels, a few different types of star fish and sea urchins.  When it was silent, we could hear the water flowing through the holes in the lava rock.  It sounds like popping bubble wrap. Then we saw some crabs.  They moved fast and swift and had a different sound on the rocks.  I started to become scared that they were following me. That night we rested up and I set my alarm so John and I could wake to the sunrise together.