Crispy Critter

Well the sun is finally out and I guess we had a bit too much fun playing in the big waves yesterday. Doug and I are both a little crispy! Of course it gets nice right before we're set to come home. Oh well...we hear Kelowna has been having record cold temperatures, so we won't complain!

The waves at this one beach we found were so big. We had a fun time trying to ride them in. I learnt my lesson the last time and figured out the best time to pu

ll 

back to not get caught in the nasty stuff. Not to say I didn't get caught a couple times!!

Here are some pictures of Doug driving under the big wave and riding in another.

Our trip to and through a Volcano

Okay Volcano National Park was an amazing experience. Despite the cloudy weather, we enjoyed a fantastic day of exploring and experiencing some once in a lifetime moments.

We started our day in the Park with a ranger tour of the Devastation Trail, a part of the park decimated by the 1959 eruption of the Kilauea Crater. With 50 years to re-grow, it's amazing how much has popped up and started growing in amongst the hardened lava and lava spray.

We then hiked on our own the Kilauea Iki Crater Trail that took us inside the Kilauea Crater. Amazing landscapes as we looped around the rim and then dropped down to walk across the crater floor. I'll post more pictures to flickr since it's hard to describe the amazing lava formations inside the crater.

It was really neat to actually see and walk right up to the steam vents on the crater floor and feel the heat coming up from below.

After our hike we then went into the Thurston Lava Tube, a cave type tube formed when the outer crust of a river of lava starts to harden but the liquid beneath the surface continues to flow through. We brought along our headlamps so that we could explore the over 300 yard unlit extension by ourselves. Very dark, and very scary...although Doug won't admit it!

Definitely a highlight of the trip was driving out at sunset to see the active lava flow that is currently flowing into the Ocean a short drive outside the park. It was hard to capture a picture once it was dark. It really doesn't do it justice. We weren't able to get too close for obvious safety reasons, but several times we did watch the hot sparking lava splash up over the edge. Very very neat!

Volcano National Park

AWESOME! Definitely a reason to visit the Big Island!

More details to follow - 11:44pm and we just got in. Need to upload many a great photo tomorrow.

Teaser...we walked in a crater and saw the lava!

Beach Days

Sorry for the lack of posts. We've been lazy and not taking the time to update our adventures. We've been taking it easy the past couples days. Decided to postpone our Volcano Park trip in hopes of the weather improving, but so far the past couple days have been pretty cloudy and rainy. We are headed there tomorrow regardless of the weather.

We spent the past couple days visiting coffee plantations, the Ukulele Festival and some awesome beaches. On Friday we took a scenic drive up around the Kohala Coast and the North end of the Island. There are some huge lush valleys here. Here was the beautiful view from Polou Valley Lookout.

We also walked out to the Puako Petroglyph Reserve where there are over 3,000 petroglyphs.

The Ukulele Festival was a lot of fun, with 3 different stages of performers and fun activities like Lei making and Ipu drum making.

We discovered a couple great beaches with lots of soft white sand. The beach yesterday was filled with young local boys with their boogie boards. The waves were at least 5 feet high at times. We had a lot of fun body surfing there. Doug got a good laugh out of me getting sucked into the giant surf only to see me get tossed around in the giant waves crashing at the beach! I had salt water dripping out of my nose for hours afterwards!!

 

  

Photos Posted on Flickr

We've been posting all of our photos to Flickr if you are interested in seeing more from our adventures. Here is the link to view:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41171787@N00/

or click here

Wednesday in Hilo

Yesterday we spent the whole day in Hilo, which is a 2 1/2 hour drive to the other side of the Island. Also known for getting 130 inches of rain each year...and not to disappoint, it rained pretty much the whole day! (Vancouver averages 43-45 inches per year) Hey - I thought this was Hawaii! Guess that's why it's so lush and things grow like crazy here.

The weather made for some big waves and surf - first time we've spotted surfers out on the water.

We checked out the Hilo Farmer's Market, a neat Japanese inspired park that was been re-built several times because of tsunamis, and we went to the Pana'ewa Rainforest Zoo. Definitely a rainforest as it poured on us on and off. We were greeted at the gate by Max the parrot that actually said "hello" to us and "bye-bye" when we left. This is Namaste, a white Bengal Tiger.

There was a very cute Macaw and Cockatoo that were just craving attention when we went to their cages. Here is our visit with Einstein the Cockatoo.

We also visited the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Factory. This was very cool to see the 12,000 acres of trees growing and to watch the machines sort and package the nuts. Apparently they process and ship 53 million individual nuts per year. We took good advantage of the free samples in the gift shop!! Lisa, you were right about the honey roasted nuts ;)

We drove up Mauna Kea volcano on our way home, in hopes of taking in the evening stargazing program. Unfortunately the cloud cover didn't break as we ascended to over 9,600 ft elevation. We'll keep an eye on the weather forecast to see if we can find another day to go back.

Today we're relaxing and snorkeling at the beach next to us. Resting up for our trip to the active volcano tomorrow. Oh! I'll post some pictures from our Ukulele lessons this afternoon. Hahaha!

Tide Pools at the Hotel

The volcanic rock has created some excellent tide pools at our hotel. In the morning while the tide is out it's fun to walk out on the lava rock and check out the sea creatures in the tide pools. We've seen a bunch of different sea anemones, urchins, sea cucumbers, little fish, crabs, and shrimp. This morning we got to see a large turtle feeding on the algae on the rocks.