Our final island was the Big Island, Hawaii. We landed midday and drove across the island. As we drove, we started to see evidence of a previous volcanic eruption, with dried lava fields dotting the central expanse of the island.
We finally arrived at our hotel, which was centrally located for us to be able to explore the eastern side of the island. We had a great view from our hotel room and were able to catch the sunset. We walked to dinner and enjoyed some seafood. Then we returned to the hotel, wandered the grounds just a bit, and turned in for the night.
Hawaii Day 1: Volcanoes National Park
The next day was the one I’d been most excited for: Volcanoes National Park. Unfortunately, the volcano had been erupting constantly for a few months before we arrived, and it stopped just before we landed. Still, I’ve always been rather scared of volcanoes, a result of having seen slightly too many volcano eruption movies at too young an age (I’m looking at you, Dante’s Peak and Pompeii TV movie), so that was actually just fine with me.
We arrived in the park and started the day with a few short hikes that allowed us to look over the caldera and walk through fields with steam vents. From there, we made our way to the visitor’s center, where we stamped our national parks books and again bought me a poster for my growing collection.
After one more lookout towards the end of the road that allowed us a different view of the caldera, we drove back down a different road to the Thurston Lava Tube, a natural tube that formed from flowing molten lava. When the lava drained away, the tube was what was left behind. The tube was unassuming, situated down some stairs in the middle of a forest. We hiked through the tube twice, marveling at the formation and the drastic temperature difference.
When we were done with the lava tube, we headed down the opposite direction, onto the Kilauea Iki Crater trail. I didn’t realize when we began the hike that it would bring us down into the caldera and onto the remains of an old lava flow from 1959. I thought we’d just be walking along the crater rim, and honestly, it was one of the coolest moments I’d ever experienced. I got some inkling as we continued to descend further and further, but it wasn’t until we came around the final corner that I realized we’d be able to actually walk along the floor of the volcano, on the dried lava of an old eruption.
My mom isn’t the best at breathing, especially uphill, on dusty paths, and on hot days, so she turned around before us, while Becca and I walked on and traversed most of the area we’d been able to see from the start of our walk across the floor of the crater. We met back at the top eventually, with my mom not having had to wait too long for us and able to go uphill at a comfortable pace for her breathing.
Next, we continued our drive around the crater rim, ending up at Devestation trail and the Keanakako’i Overlook. This overlook had clearly set up recently for eruption viewing.
We spent a bit of time at the overlook, then evaluated. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon, and we had another day that we could dedicate to the national park, but the edge of the park was only about an hour farther, and we weighed whether we wanted to turn back or not. We decided to keep going forward, which turned out to be 100% the right choice.
We followed the winding roads past numerous other eruption lava fields until we were able to see the water. We drove all the way down to the edge of the ocean, finding the Holei Sea Arch at the very bottom of the road.
We caught the beginning of the sunset at the arch, then drove back up to the higher altitude part of the park. On our way, we stopped to take a picture of a rainbow and caught sight of a sign for petroglyphs. The light was fading, but we decided we had just enough time, so we did the hike to the Pu’uloa Petroglyphs, a sacred gallery of images carved into stone. There were over 23,000 images, carved between 1200-1450 AD. It is the largest collection in Hawaii. Once we’d spent a comfortable amount of time viewing the images, we turned back, racing against the sunset and oncoming rainclouds to get back to our car safely.
By the time we got back to our car, it was almost 7. The darkness came on quickly as we were driving back to the main part of the park, and by the time we came back upon the overlook, it was fully dark and the stars were out. On a whim, and because we saw a few cars still around, we decided that we should re-walk the path to the overlook now that it was dark. It was a fantastic choice. In addition to being able to see some really good stars, the darkness revealed the presence of lava beneath the crust we’d seen from the overlook earlier in the day. We watched it bubble and flow beneath the surface for a while, amazed that while we’d missed out on the eruption, a random last-minute decision and some good timing had allowed us to still see some hints of it beneath the surface.
By that time, it was late, so we snapped a quick picture of the national park sign as we rolled out of the boundary before heading off for some late-night fast-food pizza. It had been a long, exhausting day, but because we’d fit all the things we wanted to see at the park into one day, it opened up our next day for some exploration.
Hawaii Day 2: Caves, gardens, and the unsuccessful search for a beach
Our second day on the Big Island opened up with another rainbow. Because we’d finally seen my number one tourist site, I was in a relaxed mood and much more willing to just go where the day would take us. After enjoying the rainbow at breakfast, we checked out some more of the local park near our hotel, wandering through the Japanese garden and spotting some local fish and birds.
Next, we made waterfalls our mission for the day. We drove first to the Rainbow Falls lookout, then followed the river up to a few more falls. Along the way, we found ourselves at Kaumana caves, a cave system we wandered through for a bit until it got too small for us to comfortably move further.
From there, we figured it was finally time, more than halfway through our trip, for us to look for some good beaches. Unfortunately, Hawaii is not the Hawaiian Island for beaches, at least not on the rocky eastern coast. We drove along the coast, looking for a good beach and failing to find one. We did, however, stumble onto a nice little hike along the water, which we took. In the middle of the hike, there was a botanical garden whose lands split our path.
After our hike, we decided to visit the garden and spent a lovely afternoon seeing native plants along the coast.
After the garden, our search for a beach resumed. Google Maps sent us to a river inlet that was listed as a beach, but although we found another small waterfall, we didn’t go swimming at that beach. Finally, we started back toward our hotel. We stumbled onto a beach that we’d gotten a glimpse of on our way out for the day. It was a beautiful black sand beach, but by this point in the evening, it had gotten cold enough that all we wanted to do was put our toes in. Plus, it was primarily a surfer beach, and we didn’t want to get in the way of the after-work surfing crowd. So after a short time with our feet in the sand, we headed over to the town of Hilo. We wandered through a market, along the beach, and into a few art stores before sitting down to dinner.
Hawaii Day 3: Still not much success on beaches
We woke up for our third day on the Big Island, now really committed to finding a beach. However, we needed to get back across the island so we could catch a flight later that day. We hoped that the west side of the island would offer better beach options. But because we’d decided to take the quick way across on our way there, we chose to take the longer way around the top of the island on our way back.
We began our drive north from Hilo, stopping at a few lookouts along the coast as we retraced our steps from yesterday for the first half-hour of the drive. We drove to a scenic point on the Kohala Mountain Road, finally seeing the west side of the island and the beaches we’d been looking so hard for yesterday. We stopped at one rocky beach, considering this pit stop. It wasn’t the prettiest or most comfortable-looking, so we decided to push on. After all, we’d seen many beaches from the lookout. But it wasn’t as easy as it seemed. Many of the beaches on the west side, it seemed, were accessible only through resorts.
We finally found a mall at which to have lunch. We also got some of the famed shave ice. From there, we ended up stumbling on another petroglyph site in the middle of a golf course right next to the mall, and, nearby, we found a place where we could park our car and walk through a rocky path to access the resort beaches.
Unfortunately, as we walked through the rocky path, some combination of the heat and sun, and walking got to me, and I ended up having some mild heat exhaustion. I ended up having to take some time to recover in one of the resorts, ingesting some Gatorade and enjoying the air conditioning. When I was recovered enough, we all went back outside and enjoyed the beach, an actual, sandy beach that was exactly what we’d been looking for. We ended up making friends with a sea turtle, who continued to swim within 100 feet of us for the duration of our time in the water.
Finally, it was time for us to head back to Maui for our final day in Hawaii. We headed from the beach straight to the airport, caught the sunset, and then were off.
WANDERING 