Big Island Day 3

Before I get started on my Day 3 details I thought I'd share this funny "stop" sign I saw in a parking lot in HI. I think it captures the spirit of the islands - ha!

Day 3 on the Big Island was crazy! I need one blog entry just to record it all.

Brad and I were so amazed by the island that we decided to take a road trip and see some of the high points. It sounded like a good idea in theory, except that we didn't really realize that it would take a good 6-7 hours of driving (without stopping) to make it around the entire island. We started very early and thought we were doing good, but we did have a long drive in the dark on the way home.

We started off at Waipio Valley Lookout. None of the pictures really capture the vastness of these views, but I tried to zoom in so that the scale of the mountains would stand out as much as it did in person.  

 I zoomed in on the valley because I saw some houses down there and I thought that looked crazy! I have no idea how they even get in and out because the park wouldn't let you drive down to the shore.

  

Next stop: Tex’s Drive-In where we had some famous Portugese Sweet Bread called Malasadas. They are very popular in HI and they taste like the sugared bread deserts you get off Chinese Buffets – except a million times better!

 

We went to see our first waterfalls at a place called Akaka Falls. There was an easy paved walkway through the jungle/rain forest that led you right to the big one and then in a circle to see some smaller falls. 

Right after Akaka we stopped at Rainbow Falls which was another waterfall basically on the side of the road. Thankfully the Big Island wasn’t that crowded so all the places we went we could just stand and take as many pictures as we wanted.

You could walk up these steps and there was an upper view of the falls that was also neat to look at.

There were some crazy trees that were actually more interesting than the upper portion of the falls! I had Brad stand by them as a reference point so I could show how big they were!

We also made a pit stop by the Mauna Lua Macadamia Nut farm and got some free samples. There were just acres and acres of Mac Nut Trees everywhere.

 I grabbed a nut off the ground and I was going to crack it open with my teeth but later we found out that Mac Nuts need 300 lbs of pressure per square inch to crack open so I had to use my fist instead. I kid, I kid.

We stopped for some more free samples at the Big Island Candy Factory which is supposedly a famous candy/cookie brand. I'd never heard of them before but we got these amazing dipped lemon shortbread cookies. I'm pretty sure they'll all be gone before we even get out of HI! 

Our next stop took us forever because it was sooo cool! We toured the Hawaii National Volcano Park and we were such nerds and went around and looked at everything. This is one of the only places to visit an active volcano so it’s a very cool place to visit. We learned that Hawaii was formed by volcanic activity millions of years ago and that the Big Island is basically one big volcano still today. We drove along the Crater Rim drive and made several stops. 

The actual volcano:

We saw the steam vents where super hot air is being forced out of holes in the ground by the volcano.

There was a little path to walk to this tunnel called a Lava Tube that was formed after a volcanic eruption. It was super creepy inside because there was something water-ish dripping on you the entire time.

 

It sounds so dumb but one of the coolest things about the volcano park was just driving around because there is a windward and leeward side of the volcano because one side gets a lot more rain than the other. So you would see this on one part of the drive:

 

And just a few minutes later it looked like you were driving through the rain forest! So crazy!

After the volcano park it was getting late, but we stopped at one more black sand beach right before the sun went down.

Punalu'u Beach

There was some sort of swamp pond by the beach and I took a picture and I thought it was so neat how the reflections showed in the water :)

The other thing worth mentioning about our drive was that there were only a few radio stations available and Brad and I rode for most of our trip with no music. Sometimes when you would get a station it was - odd. The pop stations would play songs one after the other from the 90s as if they were new (think Boyz II Men and Keith Sweat) and I even heard the Electic Slide once. I mean, really, who listens to that on the radio?!?! We could occasionally get the one country station but it was more of a country, etc station so it wasn't that great either. Good thing we like talking to each other - ha!

Obviously we were extremely tired once we got back. I think we left the house around 8am and got back at about 10pm. Brad did a great job of driving us home in the dark silence as I was still not used to the Hawaii time zones and fell right asleep. By the way, the sun rises about 5:30am and sets around 7pm so the confusing start and end to the day does nothing to help the jet-lagged soul.