Big Island Adventures {1}
I'm on a roll with my super early wakeups and since Mike is still snoozing I figured it'd be the perfect time to bloggity blog our past day's adventures! Now I cannot promise you a daily blog post while we're still here...but if I keep waking up sub-6am and Mike still snoozes away that just may happen!
So I left off on Tuesday 2/26 morning -- after detailing our flying and first day adventures here on the Big Island. We are here on the Hilo side until tomorrow (Thursday) morning and then we are off to the Kona side before coming back Sunday evening to fly back home (overnight flight...we get back Monday afternoon to STL...another long day of traveling!). So we have all day today left here in Hilo and then off to Kona tomorrow morning!!
Yesterday we spent relaxing and celebrating our littlest guy. It was definitely a difficult day...I felt a bit on edge most of the morning but once we decided to go snorkeling at our favorite spot and I got to delve into a new Dan Brown book (Origin...which came out like forever ago...I'm SO BEHIND in my reading!!!) underneath the gentle wind of the palm trees, I felt good. At peace. Comforted. And I knew my little Clark was smiling down on us here in Hawaii.
Just GORGEOUS. Seriously my most favorite beach in the entire world! There's just something about it that is just so, gah, peaceful. Relaxing. I could seriously sit here allllll day long (now to convince Mike to go back again today!!).
Mike is the turtle whisperer -- I swear these sea turtles flock to him! I've yet to see one when I'm snorkeling (see my video above!) but he alwaysssssss sees them whenever he goes in!!
Gosh aren't those stunning?!??! First off GoPro was an excellent investment and secondly I kinda want to print those gigantic to hang in our house!!!
So after a bit of relaxing (like 3+ hours!!) at the beach we decided to go grab lunch at one of our favorite local Thai/Chinese places before heading up to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
Of course as soon as we got up the mountain it started to pour! Haha! Typical. But we decided to take the 25 mile drive down Chain of Craters road to the ocean and lava flows we LOVED seeing the last time we were here (and yes I've got a couple then and now pics for ya!).
Once we got down a bit out of the top of the park the skies opened up and it stopped raining and we were able to put the top down. WOOT!
Once we got to the bottom it was mostly how we remembered it...LOTS AND LOTS OF LAVA. It is just jaw-dropping and a bit mind boggling to think of what this use to look like before the lava rolled down the volcano here. There were some rouge palm trees next to the ocean too that was kinda wild to see amongst the lava fields.
What was really REALLY wild was the colors in the lava -- there were rainbows EVERYWHERE! Seriously, EVERYWHERE! I couldn't stop taking pictures of them. It made my heart smile to see these colors all over...I felt like our little C was smiling down on us again.
Also, can you believe I just brought ONE CAMERA AND ONE LENS?!??! WHO EVEN AM I?!?!
After another quick peek at a spot we saw back in 2012, we hopped back in the car and drove back up -- and again were met with lots and lots of rain that actually didn't stop our entire way back to Hilo and rained most of the night too!
It was pretty late by the time we got back to our place (took us about 1 hour 45 minutes to get back!) so we decided to hit up Ken's for dinner (again!! THIRD TIME! haha!!) before calling it a night. I swear 7pm hits here and I am DONEEEEEE FOR! I'm sure this weekend I'll be acclimated to the time change just as we're about to head back home. HAHA!
Anyways, that's all for our fun-filled Big Island Adventures I've got for you today! I'll end with a couple then and now snaps...I need to whip up some more as the day goes on because I know we have been back to a lot of the same spots we went almost 7 years ago!
Have a great rest of your Wednesday friends! Aloha!!
So I left off on Tuesday 2/26 morning -- after detailing our flying and first day adventures here on the Big Island. We are here on the Hilo side until tomorrow (Thursday) morning and then we are off to the Kona side before coming back Sunday evening to fly back home (overnight flight...we get back Monday afternoon to STL...another long day of traveling!). So we have all day today left here in Hilo and then off to Kona tomorrow morning!!
Yesterday we spent relaxing and celebrating our littlest guy. It was definitely a difficult day...I felt a bit on edge most of the morning but once we decided to go snorkeling at our favorite spot and I got to delve into a new Dan Brown book (Origin...which came out like forever ago...I'm SO BEHIND in my reading!!!) underneath the gentle wind of the palm trees, I felt good. At peace. Comforted. And I knew my little Clark was smiling down on us here in Hawaii.
Mike is the turtle whisperer -- I swear these sea turtles flock to him! I've yet to see one when I'm snorkeling (see my video above!) but he alwaysssssss sees them whenever he goes in!!
Gosh aren't those stunning?!??! First off GoPro was an excellent investment and secondly I kinda want to print those gigantic to hang in our house!!!
So after a bit of relaxing (like 3+ hours!!) at the beach we decided to go grab lunch at one of our favorite local Thai/Chinese places before heading up to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
Of course as soon as we got up the mountain it started to pour! Haha! Typical. But we decided to take the 25 mile drive down Chain of Craters road to the ocean and lava flows we LOVED seeing the last time we were here (and yes I've got a couple then and now pics for ya!).
Once we got down a bit out of the top of the park the skies opened up and it stopped raining and we were able to put the top down. WOOT!
Once we got to the bottom it was mostly how we remembered it...LOTS AND LOTS OF LAVA. It is just jaw-dropping and a bit mind boggling to think of what this use to look like before the lava rolled down the volcano here. There were some rouge palm trees next to the ocean too that was kinda wild to see amongst the lava fields.
What was really REALLY wild was the colors in the lava -- there were rainbows EVERYWHERE! Seriously, EVERYWHERE! I couldn't stop taking pictures of them. It made my heart smile to see these colors all over...I felt like our little C was smiling down on us again.
Also, can you believe I just brought ONE CAMERA AND ONE LENS?!??! WHO EVEN AM I?!?!
After another quick peek at a spot we saw back in 2012, we hopped back in the car and drove back up -- and again were met with lots and lots of rain that actually didn't stop our entire way back to Hilo and rained most of the night too!
It was pretty late by the time we got back to our place (took us about 1 hour 45 minutes to get back!) so we decided to hit up Ken's for dinner (again!! THIRD TIME! haha!!) before calling it a night. I swear 7pm hits here and I am DONEEEEEE FOR! I'm sure this weekend I'll be acclimated to the time change just as we're about to head back home. HAHA!
Anyways, that's all for our fun-filled Big Island Adventures I've got for you today! I'll end with a couple then and now snaps...I need to whip up some more as the day goes on because I know we have been back to a lot of the same spots we went almost 7 years ago!
Have a great rest of your Wednesday friends! Aloha!!
