Hawaii Day 4

 

So I’m doing these blogs in July… 4 months after the trip, because I’m caught up on everything like that.  I don’t remember if this was day 3 or 4 so I’m just calling it 4 and if it wasn’t, oh well.  On this day, whatever day it was, we drove up to the north part of the island.  We wanted to catch the sunset up there and we did, which was pretty.  And we saw some of the rainforest-y terrain as well, and wild pigs!  It was interesting to see the more rural part of the Big Island.  Some of the houses seemed pretty much like shacks.  There were clouds rolling through which made it pretty.  The picture below was a pretty tree that was in downtown Kona.  I’m not sure what it was.  Someone said Banyan but I don’t think it was.  But I’m no tree expert.

Pictures from the drive north.  Typical rocky terrain.

I honestly don’t even remember where these were taken.

We ate across the street from this statue of King Kamehameha.

All of these pictures are from our drive back.  We passed over a few streams and the forest was so thick!  Definitely neat to see.

 

We made it to the beach in time for the sunset.  All of these photos were taken in order, I was just messing around with my camera settings for some of them.  This was another one of my favorite parts of the trip.  Watching the sunset and listening to the waves and then crawling around the lava rocks looking for shells tucked in them.  We found quite a few!

Hawaii, day 2 and 3

 

We decided to head down to the coast to look at more lava flows.  It was a pretty and interesting drive because you could see where newer lava had flowed over the old lava.  And it was really windy!  We got out of the car a few times at some of the stops

 

This next part was one of my favorites from the trip.  We got to walk out on the lava field that you think of when you think of rolling lava.  It kind of reminded me of fabric laying on the ground in some areas.  It was fun, and kind of hard, to walk on and touch it.  I could have spent a lot of time there but the car was on the side of the road with the kids and my parents in it so we didn’t stay out long.

 

We finally made it down to the coast and we JUST missed a mama humpback whale and her baby going by the viewing area.  You can see it in the second picture below – they were blowing as they went by.  I ran down there, but by the time we drove back and found a parking spot and I got all the way back down there they were gone.  Bummer, but at least we saw it from a distance.  This is where we also had a serious talk with the big kids about staying close to us and far away from the edges/cliffs.

The next day we headed out to find some sea turtles and we hit the jackpot with them!  We had actually seen a few the night before when we stopped at a black sand beach, but I didn’t take my good camera out of the car then, so I didn’t get any good pictures of those – just on my phone.  However, the next day we went to a beach and there were probably 10-15 of them on the rocks and in the water.  You can’t get within 10 feet of them, but it was SO tempting to reach out and touch one of them.  I would have loved to swim with them!

 

We had fun wandering around the rocks and looking in all the tide pools for turtles.  The rocks were a little slippery at times so I’m glad Mark was carrying J.

 

Jamison had fun sitting in the sand and throwing it all over the place.  We went and ate at a sea food joint on the bay after this and it was decent food.  Then we headed back to the condos for naps for J and me and Mark and my parents took the big kids swimming.

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