Hawaii Day 4

Hawaii Day 4 started early as we left our cute rental in Kaaawa and drove back to Honolulu. We were nervous about unfamiliar traffic, but it really ended up not being a big deal. We were there in plenty of time. Actually we relaxed in the airport for awhile and watched a few Marco Polo videos from the kids. Marco Polo is a video messaging app that we discovered a month or two before coming to Hawaii. It was perfect for our trip! It is like video chatting, but you don't have to be available at the same time. You just take a little video of things and send it to the other person, and she can respond back to you when she gets a chance. It's awesome.
We took off on a little airplane to head to Hilo on the Big Island. I think it is funny that the big island is really what everyone calls that island even though its real name is Hawaii. Anyway, it was a short little flight and very fun to look out the window and see the Diamond Head Crater and then Maui below. When we got to the tiniest little airport, we got our rental car. Fortunately we looked around the car and noticed some damage to one of the tires. We told the agents about it, and they upgraded us to the convertible. Oh yeah! It was so fun! There will be a picture later on of it.
First on the agenda was lunch in Hilo, which was so much harder than it should have been. We ended up trying a couple of different places, which didn't work out. So we ended up just eating at Subway. It was actually really good. Turns out we really like a yummy cold cut, vegatable-y sandwich. When we finally got through with lunch, we headed north to some fun waterfalls.

Rainbow Falls was gorgeous and just right in the middle of a small town. Apparently if you go on a sunny morning the rainbow from the mist is gorgeous. We didn't see any rainbows, but it was a lovely waterfall anyway. I particularly thought the cave behind the falls seemed cool, but as much as we looked around there didn't appear to be any way to get down to it. Perhaps you could boat up to it from downstream? 

We loved the jungly trees and plants around. This particular tree that I am with in this picture is not being done justice. It was huge with a large canopy overhead.

Hawaii State Parks! Still have to pinch myself a little that we went to Hawaii!

This is the view that supposedly has the cool rainbows, but it was a lovely overcast day for us.

Look, we were there, together. :)

 From the overlook there was a little trail heading off into the jungle. It was a short walk that led to this cool jungle grove. I felt my imagination run wild, picturing these trees as a home for fairies. Yeah, I spend most of my time with three small girls, bet you couldn't tell. :)

Look how huge these trees are! John looks so tiny next to them. 

There were other fun vine-y trees too. What a fun place!

Next up on the list was Akaka Falls. This was further north and we had a lot of fun syncing our phone to the fancy car as listening to our favorite tunes while driving through the gorgeous countryside of the big island. It was wonderful. 

When we got to Akaka Falls we took the long way around the falls and did a jungle walk. We saw fun bamboo patches that were shockingly tall. I swear some of that bamboo must have been 30 or 40 feet tall. There were also these loud whistles coming from the foliage that we later learned came from tree frogs. Check out these wild flowers growing, stunning. I loved the one just growing up on the skinny branch of that tree. 

 The trees were so dense in some places, I had to get this picture of John with them. After that fun walk we made it to Akaka Falls. This beautiful waterfall is 420 feet tall. That's so tall!

 This overcast day made for some pretty light for these pictures. That waterfall was such an impressive sight.

 The rest of the jungle walk was spectacular as well. We saw these wild banana trees. See the cool banana blossom and the baby bananas?

We see a lot of lizards at home, but nothing quite so brightly colored as this green lizard chilling on these bamboo stalks.

Here is a photo of our cool convertible. The mustang definitely had so much more power than our little cars that we normally drive. Unfortunately because it was pretty rainy on and off we only took the top down a handful of times. It was sure fun though!

We continued further up the beautiful coast to Laupahoehoe Park. It is a gorgeous outcropping of lava rock. The waves were so fun to watch here.

Huge splash!

In order to get an appreciation of the waves crashing on the rocks you have to see the rocks with the crashing waves....

And without the wave crashing. Those waves are huge. It was mesmerizing to watch them.

We learned that this area suffered a devastating tsunami years ago. The ocean is so powerful--it is both awe inspiring and terrifyingly intimidating.

These lava rocks were fun to scramble around on. Lava rock is so jagged and sharp though. I was glad our kids weren't there trying to climb. I would be nervous one of them would fall and instead of resulting in a normal skinned knee, it would be a huge gash. 

This area is also home to those clickety-clackety black crabs. Unfortunately it was also home to orangey red crabs. Turns out we mainly just found bits and pieces of those. I presume these are the crabs that the birds can see so they get eaten. Natural selection at work...
This red crab was actually dead. Gross.

I just loved this gorgeous coast line. Oh, and I love that handsome guy. :)

That night we headed back to Hilo and ate a yummy Mexican meal at a local joint. John had the biggest fish burrito ever. We also stopped by Walmart and picked up food for the stay, turns out food is expensive there. After that we drove through the jungle to our rental. I'll share pics of that later, but some fun highlights of that studio was the personal hot tub, access to Netflix, and just a really nice place.