The Big Island Part 2

After lunch, we got to go to the main attraction of our tour: Volcanoes National Park. Volcanoes National Park is a huge area, and takes up a major portion of the island. They started by taking us to an overlook in the front of the park, where we could see the steam venting out of one of the main fissures in the park.

The park is up at a higher elevation, and as such is actually quite a bit cooler in temperature than the majority of the islands.  From the lookout we walked about a quarter of a mile through a fairly lush group of trees, and to the entrance of the Thurston Lava Tube. I can't really explain it as well as Wikipedia, so here's the link to that page.

A bit of a blurry shot from inside the lava tube.

 We then went to another steam vent before heading for the visitors' center. Brynn (and nearly everyone else) cheesing it up at one point or another.

Brynn cheesing it up :)

From the visitors' center, you can see the main fissure of the volcano, but of course at a much further distance. This is actually the second visitors' center, as the first one was within a 1/4 mile of where that particular fissure is now spewing smoke. Thankfully at the time it started erupting was at 2 in the morning, so there were no injuries from the new eruption.

As Brynn put it, me blowing my top

The volcano was extremely interesting, but the better views were actually later on. But first, they took us to another feature I'd never seen before, a black sand beach near Kalapana.

The beaches are formed by the volcanic dust related to the new eruptions, and are an extremely cool sight to see. As the tour guide put it, we were standing on the newest land in the world, and even younger than us.

The final stop on the tour was out to the lava flows at Kalapana. This is the area where the lava continues to flow, and has done so for years. There used to be housing out in the area, but over time a lot of them have been taken by the lava flow. However, some still remain, and are even trying to move the properties still.

Out in front of some property in danger of the lava flow.

We were lucky enough to see a couple of breaks which caused some lava to show on the surface.

Taken from about 200-300 feet away approximately (not sure)

Overall, it was an extremely interesting trip, and the fact that we were able to see some lava flow before leaving was extremely cool. The tour bus took us back to Hilo's airport, where we were able to get a snack at the one dining counter/refrigerator before flying back to Oahu. All in all, it was extremely interesting, even in spite of the poor performance at lunch. It was just so cool to see not only the black sand beaches but also the newest land being formed out there.

The Big Island Part 1

Well, it's been a while since I've written again, and I've actually been busy working (I know, it's a shocker). A little less than a month ago now, Brynn and I went on an all-day trip/tour to the Big Island of Hawaii.

The Big Island, (actually named Hawaii, as opposed to Oahu, where we are), is much more sparsely populated in comparison to Oahu, and part of the reason for this is the fact that the island is home to active volcanoes. This was the biggest reason we actually wanted to go, so that we could see the volcanoes potentially.

The tour started with a pretty early pick up. At 6:15 am, the tour group and their smaller tour bus (about 20 people at most) arrived to pick us up for our ride to the airport. It was only about a 30-40 minute ride to the airport, and we were ready to wait for our short flight.

It was a little less than an hour until our flight, and the irony was not lost on me that the wait would be longer than the flight. From Honolulu, the flight to Hilo Airport is only about 40 minutes long. We then arrived there around 9:15, and were greeted by what can only be described as a tiny airport.

We walked to the tour guide, who proceeded to inform us that we needed to get our boarding passes for our return flights before the tour would get started. After a bit of frustration, we were able to get the passes, and proceeded to wait on a similarly small bus as the rest of the group joined us.

We were a bit surprised as the bus left the airport with only about 15 people on it, despite a capacity of probably 25. The tour guide informed us that our first stop was the Big Island Candies, a business that would allow us to see them make a bunch of sweet treats. What we did not realize at the time was that the bus was dropping us off here, and leaving us there while they went to go pick up some other tourists from Maui for our tour as well. The inside of the place was realistically, only going to take up about 15 minutes of our time. However, the bus did not return until almost an hour later. Needless to say, there were quite a few concerned looks from the tour group who had been sitting there. This did, however, give me the opportunity to take a picture of the cool scenery that could be seen from the building. The land just kind of rolls slowly upward, and makes for a really cool effect.

Once the tour bus finally picked us up again, we were taken past Hilo's hotel row. It consists of about 6-10 hotels at most, but the interesting part was the fact that on the other side of the street were a number of banyan trees. Each of the trees had a small sign in front of them, notating who had planted the tree. There were quite a few famous people (Amelia Earhart, Richard Nixon), but to us the most interesting one was the tree with a sign in front of it noting James S. McCandless. We haven't been able to determine if he was related to Brynn's family, but apparently he was a fairly important figure in the early part of the 20th century on the Big Island.

We were then brought to Lili'uokalani Park, which is a Japanese garden set up right on the coastline of Hilo Bay. Not a lot to say necessarily about the place, but the pictures came out extremely nice.

Ground Level view of a small lake in the Park

The view from ground level of a small bridge

After a stop at a small farmers market, we were on our way to our next attraction, Rainbow Falls.

The park where the falls are located actually had a few different interesting things to it. With some lucky timing, we were able to get a really great shot of a small gecko hanging out there.

In addition, there was also an extremely large banyan tree in the park, which has actually rooted itself in multiple locations at this point.

After finishing up our time in the park, we then went to Volcano Country Club for our scheduled lunch. I'm not going to get into this too much, but the essentials are this: the food was not that great, the service was even worse, and was really not a very good feeling overall.

The second half of our trip will be in the next post.

The USS Arizona Memorial

One of the biggest tourist spots on Oahu remains the USS Arizona Memorial. Located out near Pearl Harbor Naval Base, the memorial is to honor the fallen soldiers from the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941. We went there a couple of weeks back, but have only really had time now to write about it.

The first thing you see when you walk in is that no bags of any kind are allowed into the visitors center area. There is a short path to an area where they keep the bags for a nominal fee. Once inside, the first thing to do was to go to the ticket line for the boat to the Arizona. The memorial itself is a small builfing which is stationed directly over the sunken Arizona. The reason it is the first stop is that they take no reservations for this boat ride, and it is entirely first come first served. We arrived shortly after 10 am, and our tickets were for a tour at 12:45 pm. We had some time, so we wandered the grounds.





They are in the process of finishing a new visitors center, and also have a gift shop to go along with 3 other paid tours that you can take. One is a tour of the USS Bowfin, a WW2 submarine. Another is of an air museum, and the third is a tour of the battleship Missouri. Also on the grounds they have displays which talk about how the attack occurred and a video discussing the results of the attack as well. In addition, there are smaller monuments listing all those who had perished on all ships that day.


 











After lunch we were finally on our boat ride to the memorial itself. They tell you on the boat that you need to not take pictures when you first get off the boat so that everyone can get off the boat quickly. Once inside, an eerie feeling comes over you as you are reminded that this is a graveyard. It is a fairly small area, but they still manage to have somewhere between 100 and 200 people in the memorial at any given time.

Inside they have a marble engraved wall which lists all of the sailors who parished that day on the Arizona. Something I was not aware of before getting there was that some of the survivors of the attacks who have since passed on have also been interred there with their shipmates. All in all it was a very somber setting, and an interesting reminder of the past.

The Hike to the Top of Diamondhead

Last week, we took a day to go hike up to the top of Diamondhead. It is about a 20-25 minute bus ride from where we are in Waikiki, and was actually a very nice hike.

We get off of the bus, and start the short hike up to the entrance to the park. The park costs $1 per person to enter if you come in on foot, or $5 per car. Since we have no car, it's kind of a moot point. But it was nice because there really was not enough parking to handle the amount of cars that were in line when we walked through.

The path starts out as a paved walkway, but very quickly becomes a rocky path that will zig-zag up the peak to move you up the side of the mountain quickly. The sign at the start of the path states it should take between an hour and an hour and a half to get up and back, which was nice to see considering we waited to start the hike until about 10:30ish and it was already getting warm out.

The view from the bottom of the hill. Nothing but switchbacks up quite a ways.










After walking up the switchbacks for probably about 10-15 minutes, we get to a set of stairs.  According to the brochure, 74 concrete steps lead to the first tunnel. The tunnel is about 225 feet, which leads to another stairway, this time of 99 steep steps. At this point, it now leads to a spiral staircase that realistically should only fit traffic going one direction, but is still used for both directions. Once you get to the top of this, it opens into a small room that finally gets you out onto the path up to the top of the peak.

The hike is worth it. All of the following are the view from the paths up to the top, which are all open air. The city pictures are of Waikiki itself.

All in all, it was an excellent hike. We were helped on the way back down the mountain by the fact that a light rain started to fall, and the breeze picked up as well. The craziest part seemed to be the amount of tourists who had no idea that it might actually involve a real hike, as they were all wearing sandals despite it being a hike. Another thing to be checked off that we have now done here in Hawaii.

Back on the Circle Island

We decided to go back on the Circle Island bus this past weekend again, but this time the goal was to go to one of the many beaches along the route. After a stop at Longs Drugs to pick up beach mats (for the oh-so-expensive price of $1.99 per), we got onto the bus headed north through Mililani again toward Haleiwa.

Now, part of the reason we had decided to go back to Haleiwa was because when we were there last time, we had not partaken of the main tourist attraction in Haleiwa. Matsumoto's Shaved Ice. Now, you may ask, shaved ice is all the same, isn't it? I mean, it's just crushed ice and flavoring. Could there actually be anything that would make Matsumoto's shaved ice better than what we could find out in Waikiki?

The answer to that question is a resounding yes. And here's why: The key to Matsumoto's Shaved Ice is the fact that you can get it with vanilla ice cream underneath it. We were both extremely skeptical when we heard about this, and probably had similar questions to the ones above. However, when we got down to the ice cream (which was after about 1/2 of the shaved ice had been eaten and another 1/4 of it had melted), mixing the two together made for an extremely smooth taste and flavor.

Now, we actually didn't start at Matsumoto's in Haleiwa. When we got into town, we noticed that there were shrimp trucks right off the side of the road. Brynn had heard from a friend that Giovanni's shrimp truck was amazing. By some small feat, one of the truck's we saw right here were Giovanni's. We got off the bus, walked over to it, and ordered.

There are only 3 things on the menu essentially, and all of them are shrimp plates. We decided to split a shrimp scampi plate, which came with 2 scoops of rice and gravy for $13. We even had a coupon for a free soda with the purchase of the plate.

This is with about 8 or 9 shrimp left out of the 12 we started with. They were gigantic shrimp (yes, definitely an oxymoron there), and were DELICIOUS. I had never been out to eat at one of the shrimp trucks that line the North Shore, and I will definitely be back there again.

After we left Haleiwa later on in the afternoon, we still had not been to the beach. As we rode the bus, we saw Waimea Bay again, but didn't like the amount of people that were there. We understood it was a holiday weekend, but we've both kind of come to the conclusion that we're not necessarily huge crowd people. As a result, we kept riding until we found a beach park called Kokololio Beach Park. Off to the side, they were setting up for a 4th of July celebration, but the beach was much quieter than any of the others we had passed to this point. I'm sure at least part of that was related to the fact that we did not arrive at this beach until around 3:00 in the afternoon, but it was still very pleasant.

We ended up staying for about an hour or so, and then catching the bus back to town. It was a long day, as we left Honolulu around 9:45 and didn't get back until almost 7 pm, but it was a very fun day as well.

The Circle Island Tour

On Saturday, we decided to take the bus on the circle island route. The bus in Hawaii is extremely useful, and runs nearly everywhere someone may want to go. Like any other bus, it nay take a little while longer to get some places than it would with a rental car, but there are some definite advantages to the bus. Starting with the low, low price of a monthly pass of $60(compared to 2.25 per trip). For senior ciizens t is even more ridiculous, as they can buy a year pass for $30 total.

The circle island route starts at Ala Moana Shopping Center, and goes up H2 through Mililani and.  On its way towards the north shore of the island and Haleiwa.

Haleiwa is an old plantation town that in recent years has become more of a small shopping area for those looking for something slightly less touristy than Waikiki. Like many of the other places on the island, there is a very quiet beach there.

After getting back on the bus, we continued the tour northeast. The bus follows Kamehameha highway the rest of the way, and we got off at the Turtle Bay resort, which is where the first half of the route ends.

The Turtle Bay resort is a semi-private resort up on Oahu's North Shore. For all intents and purposes, it is a very nice resort, but there really isn't a whole lot out there at that point besides the resort. As a result, nearly all of the guests of the resort go to the beach that is there. We had packed a picnic lunch, and found a shady spot under a tree near the beach to relax and eat.

After taking some pictures on the rocky edge of the beach, we headed back to the bus stop to wait for the next bus going to the windward side of the island. The bus was supposed to run every 30 minutes, so we figured we would not be there for long.

30 minutes went into 45 and nearly an hour passed before the bus we wanted finally arrived. In the meantime, we talked with another person waiting for the bus. An elderly lady, she was definitely a local. She told us that she took this bus just for the views off of the road, and that she thought it was one of the prettiest stretches in all the island. She was right. Around every turn seemed to be another small to mid-size beach, but missing were the tourists. Only the locals really stop at these beaches, she said, since they were so far from Honolulu proper. The most amazing thing to see was the water. Off the windward coast, these beaches were very much untouched, and not really affected by the issues that large quantities of tourists can bring. As a result, we could see at least 4 different shades of blue in the water as we passed it, and was practically clear in a lot of areas.

As the bus ride continued, the elderly lady continued to point out different spots off the side of the road, which realistically we probably would not have really noticed without her there. About halfway back to Honolulu, another local man also began to point out different landmarks along the ride. Essentially, we had a pair of tour guides from the time we left the resort, without having to pay for them. As we came back into the Honolulu area via the Pali Highway, we were shown a couple of locations that we needed to visit at some point during our stay here in Hawaii.

Overall, it was a very interesting trip, and has given us a whole lot of places that we can go visit that are a bit off the beaten path here in Hawaii.

The King Kamehameha Parade

Friday was a state holiday here in Hawaii - King Kamehameha Day. You can read all about King Kamehameha here on Wikipedia, but the long and short of why he is celebrated is this: Kamehameha was responsible for the unification of the Hawaiian Islands under one ruler. As a result, he is celebrated here with a state holiday on June 11th. For many employers here, it's a day off of work.

On the Saturday (the 12th), the City and County of Honolulu had a parade with which to help celebrate the day as well. 


This was the start of the parade. I'd like to tell you that I know what that means off the top of my head, but I don't. If I were to guess it had something to do with the celebration and the parade.









This was the float carrying the "representation of the Royal family". They build them big here, no doubt on that one. My wife posted this one on Facebook as well, and needless to say it got quite a few comments on it.

This is the Royal Hawaiian Marching Band. They actually sounded pretty good, and I was surprised honestly that there was a Royal Hawaiian Marching Band.

As a part of the parade each year, each island has a "princess", who is usually a notable citizen of some type or other. In many cases, it was a respected member of the local community, although they may not necessarily have been from the island that they represented. Each of them is on horseback, along with a standard-bearer with the information on it.

The parade ends over at the statue of King Kamehameha that is across the street from the Iolani Palace. Every year, there is a ceremony on King Kamehameha day to drape these flower leis on the statue. Apparently since they are 13+ feet long in some cases, it requires a small crane of some sort. There is also a lot of paperwork entailed with being allowed to put a lei on the statue, and during the ceremonies and parade there are members of the Royal Guard patrolling to make sure that no one is allowed to put anything on the statue that isn't authorized.






Overall, it was very interesting to see this parade, because while it was only about an hour long, there were quite a few of the main groups in Hawaii who were represented, including all branches of the military stationed here on Oahu. Not surprisingly, since the parade route went partially on Kalakaua Avenue, which is one of the main entrances to the Waikiki area, traffic for the day was a complete disaster area. All in all, a fun time though still.