Big Island: Day 5

We spent our last full day of vacation hanging out at our hotel: The Hilton Waikoloa Village.

 

This hotel almost puts the Hyatt on Kauai to shame! It's a 62-acre oceanfront resort with three pools featuring waterfalls, waterslides, a tram, a boat, and even dolphins! Noah is so spoiled by the amazing hotels in Hawaii that he's going to be majorly disappointed with a simple rectangular pool when we go back to the mainland. 

Starting the morning off with a chocolate croissant on our balcony

 Beyond ready to head to the pool!!!

 The tram that took us to the other side of the hotel so we could use the smaller pools for the morning

 The tram was the first thing we saw when we walked into the hotel, and Noah was soooo excited about getting to ride on it! He was also ridiculously excited about the snorkel mask :-D

 

A few photos of our hotel grounds

Daddy & Noah jumping into the pool by 9am

 My handsome guys!!!

It was overcast and slightly rainy in the morning so Lucas didn't get to go swimming (I thought it was a little too chilly and he already had a runny nose) but he had a lot of fun watching big brother play in the pool!

 

The view looking away from the pool where the boys were swimming

 Our room is in the section of the hotel you can kind of see in the far background of this photo

Big Island: Day 4

Yesterday, Day 4 of our trip, we drove around the southern part of the island to reach our final destination of the trip: The Hilton Waikoloa Village!

Shortly after checking out of our cabin, we had to pull over for a pit stop and ended up finding a neat little park with some impressively large trees. Ely took photos of the trees on his camera so I will have to post those later :-)

Lucas hasn't mastered the art of taking a selfie yet ;-)

Daddy and Noah racing back to the van. Noah is in a stage right now where almost everything is a race and he wants to be the winner! 

Our first official stop on the drive was at Punalu'u Beach. The beach is famous for its black sand, which you can see in the photo below, right before the reef that Ely and Noah are standing on.

There were several sea turtles swimming around the reef that we could see popping their heads up out of the water!

Noah and Daddy checking out a tide pool

Our next stop was at Punalu'u Bake Shop. 

They are the "Southernmost bakery in the USA!" 

Ely had a delicious malasada with lilikoi frosting, I had a mango malasada, and Noah picked out a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting. (His exact request was for the "black cupcake" but he hardly ate the cupcake part, he mostly just ate the frosting :-)

 

After all that frosting, Noah started running laps around this circle! I lost track of how many times he actually went around!

(You might have noticed that Noah is in a completely different outfit than he was in earlier in the day. It should come as no surprise that he managed to fall into a tide pool at the beach!)

We also stopped at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau. Ancient Hawaiian royal chiefs established one of their most important residences here, but it was also a place of refuge. Separated from the royal grounds by a massive wall was the pu'uhonua, a place of refuge for defeated warriors, noncombatants in time of war, and those who violated kapu, the sacred laws.

In 1961 it became a national historical park where they try and maintain old Hawaiian ways.

The boys "playing" konane, a game involving pebbles arranged on a papamu (a stone surface)

Noah and Mommy with two ki'i, guardians of the place of refuge.

King Kamochimochi ;-)

Since the grounds are part of the National Park Service, Noah was able to become a Junior Park Ranger by completing a few tasks in a book and taking the Junior Ranger pledge! He took it all very seriously and worked really hard to earn the badge :-)

Big Island: Day 3 (part 2)

We had so many pictures from our volcano adventure that I decided to break it up into two parts, so here are the photos from the second half of our volcano tour :-)

Holei Sea Arch 

The arch and the rest of the coast are formed by different lava flows running into the ocean and meeting the waves. Unfortunately, there were no active lava flows while we were there (the last active flow was in August of last year).

Lucas during our lunch break. He's decided to start taking matters into his own hands when it comes to food :-)

This photo is for Papa:

Noah staring down a pheasant (I don't remember what kind of pheasant our guide said it was, though)

Our next stop was Devastation Trail, a path that goes through the cinder outfall of the 1959 eruption of Kilauea Iki.

Noah insisted on pushing Lucas

Noah standing next to a lava tree hole. We saw several of these during our tour. They are formed when trees get surrounded by molten lava. The lava gets cooled by the tree but the tree is burned to ash and leaves these perfect imprints of the trees.

One of our last stops was at the steam vents. Ground water seeps down to the hot volcanic rocks in this area and returns to the surface as steam.

Our last stop was at the Jaggar Museum and overlook where we finally got to see the Halema'uma'u Crater during the day. The gas eruption from this crater started on March 19, 2008. The vent diameter is currently about 525 feet.

What we saw from this spot at night:

Big Island: Day 3

It's technically the end of our fourth day, but due to several circumstances (one of those being a very busy day yesterday) I'm just now completing the post for day 3. At this point in our vacation, Ely and I are also questioning our sanity in taking a hyperactive 3 1/2 year old on a trip where nap time is not always possible...

Anyways, on Day 3 of our Big Island vacation we took a tour of the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park. Seeing the volcano sites was our main motivation for choosing the Big Island, and it was definitely a very cool experience :-)

Our first stop was the Kilauea Iki Crater which  erupted and filled with lava in 1959. The crater is a mile long, 3000 feet across, and the floor is 400 feet below this overlook.

The smoke in the background of this picture is the hazardous fumes from the Halema'uma'u Crater (the red glow seen in the photos from the other night)

Lucas missed out on this family photo op because he was busy sleeping :-)

Our next stop was the Thurston Lava Tube (Nahuku).

Noah posing next to a small lava tube (he kept wanting to make "goggles" in all of the pictures *but I think he meant binoculars* because they use them in the jungle on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse :-)

 

At the entrance of the Thurston Lava Tube 

Inside the lava tube

We continued driving down Chain of Craters Road, which descends 3,700 feet to the coast and ends at a 2003 lava flow.

Some of the hardened lava that can be seen along the drive

The Pauahi Crater which erupted in 1973 and 1979

 It's 2000 feet long and about 300 feet deep

The view as we started the final descent on the Chain of Craters Road. The dark strips in the background are old lava flows.

If you look closely at this photo, you can see the old road that used to lead down to the coast...they had to build a new one when lava flowed over the old road :-)