Hawaii - Part 1

{April 18th - 25th}

The Big Island

We got to take an awesome trip with Brian's sister, Cathey, and her husband back in April-

We left the kids with Mimi and spent an amazing week in Hawaii!

We spent the first 3 days on the Big Island of Hawaii and then flew over to Kauai for the last 4 days.

It was soo incredible!

We stayed at the Fairmont Orchid on the northwest side near Kona.

We were up and out the door by 8 every morning and packed our days so full!
We spent the first afternoon just hanging out at the hotel beach and pool and the time change wiped us out pretty good that night.

We rented jeep wranglers on both islands and the first full day we off-roaded to a somewhat secluded beach called Makalawena Beach (only accessible by 4WD or a long walk in).

I think this might have been the most gorgeous beach we went to!

hiking in the last little part to Makalawena Beach

#nailedit

After massages at the hotel, we spent the second half of the day hitting up Mauna Kea beach and Hapuna Beach snorkeling, playing and boogie boarding.

Mauna Kea

#nailedit

Hapuna Beach

headed out to dinner.
We researched things that got great ratings and ate at some awesome places on both islands!
This night we found an italian restaurant called Pueo's Osteria... it was amazing!

The second day we drove through the middle of the island and down the east side to Hilo.

The drive was so gorgeous... very green and different from the west side of the island.

Mount Mauna Kea

We visited Rainbow Falls before driving up to Volcano National Park that afternoon.

We had rainy, colder weather all afternoon but it was still a great day.

Volcanoes National Park

Hualalai Crater, the active part of Kilauea

Hiking through the Thurston Lava Tube

We also drove down to check out Holei Sea Arch

We decided to camp out in the park at the Volcano House.

They were these cute little cabins with beds and linens provided.

We were bummed about the rain all day but when it got dark, the skies cleared and we had awesome weather to roast marshmallows.

We could also see the orange glow in the sky from the erupting crater when it got dark since we were so close.

On our way back to the west side of the island, we drove down the south coast and visited Punalu'u Black Sand beach.

Obviously we knew it would be black sand but we were so surprised just how dark and pure it was.

Everything we read said this was one of the most likely places to see tons of turtles.
We got there early in the morning and only found this 1 little fellow.
He was pretty big though and we got to get close.

For our last afternoon on the big island we snorkeled at Kahalu'u Beach Park for a bit and then hit up White Sands Beach (also called Magic Sands Beach)

This beach was small but also soo gorgeous!
It had huge rolling waves that were really fun to play in, but that would churn you and wipe you out on the shore... and then pull you back out again.
We had a near-miss when my camera detached from our strap and we thought we'd lost it in the ocean.
We figured there was no way we would find it with the water churning so bad but after looking for about 30 minutes we somehow found it on the bottom right near where we had probably lost it.

Our last meal before heading to the airport for Kauai... Huggo's on the Rocks!
The best fish tacos we had on the trip