Tuesday Travel Talk... (on Wednesday)

The Big Island, Hawaii!
I got lucky enough to go to Hawaii with Stephen's family in December of 2004. I had never been to any tropical islands before and it was SO beautiful! We started off in the Big Island of Hawaii, and spent a week there. The island has so much variety, and I think it's one of the few places in the world where you can ski and go to the beach in the same day (although we stuck to beaches). There are two sides to the island- the drier side, called Kona, and the wetter, more tropical side called Hilo. We stayed on the Kona side, because it rains much more in Hilo and we wanted to spend lots of time at the beach.

We rented a car (definitely a must for any island except Oahu) and took an entire day to drive to the Hilo side and explore. I wish we had had more time, so we could have seen the black sand beaches. But it was a very full-packed day! We went to Volcanoes National Park and saw red lava flowing steadily down the volcano. This picture was taken in front of a lava tube that we walked through. It was awesome!

One of my favorite things we saw in Hilo was this gorgeous waterfall. We took a short hike to get there through tons of old, gnarled, mossy trees. It was SO cool! I love waterfalls.

We did tons of other awesome things in the Big Island, like scuba diving and taking a helicopter tour! There are so many things to do there, it's hard to choose! But island-hopping is fun too, and we spent the second week of our vacation in Oahu. But I'll have to do a whole separate post about that!