From our hotel, the Royal Kona Resort, we drove north, up the west coast to Hapuna State Beach. This is the Big Island's longest "white" sand beach. While the beach was nice, it really didn't compare to some of Oahu's beautiful beaches. From there we drove south a little to see some Hawaiian petroglyphs. On the way we stopped for some sushi for lunch, and that is when I read the news about MJ on Twitter (something I will probably always remember). Sad. The hike out to view the thousands of petroglyphs made me VERY thankful for the development of sturdy shoes. Even though I was only in flip flops, I was so glad I wasn't barefoot!
From there we drove back to Kona and toured the Kona Brewery! We learned that all of Kona's bottled beer is made and bottled on the mainland, but all of the kegs that are sold in Hawaii are produced there. Widmer Bros. bottles and produces the beer for the Western - Midwest US, and Redhook bottles and produces the beer for the Eastern US. :) (Ahhh...our dear sweet Redhook that was near our home in NH.) After the short tour we tasted a few beers, then had an early dinner and sampled some other beers that we didn't have on the tour. Our favorite Kona Beer is the Wailua Wheat Ale.
After dinner we went back to the hotel to watch the sunset and swim. We turned in early that night in order to get up early the next morning and head out for a day of hiking to the green sand beach! The next morning we woke up, grabbed breakfast and drove to the southern-most point of the island. After finally finding the place where tourists park to hike out to the green sand beach, we started out on our long hike. After about three miles of hiking, we finally arrived at the green sand beach! What a strange color! Papakolea's green sand comes from the high concentration of olivine that is extracted by the water from the cinder.
Here Zac and I had a picnic lunch and Zac played in the really powerful waves. Luckily, on the
hike back to the car, a very nice local gave us a ride half way. :) Lopaca (which means Robert), went out to the coast to hunt for octopus, however the seas were too strong that day, so he
decided to head back in and found us on his way. We jumped in the back of his Jeep Wrangler and thanked him for his hospitality. We still had a few hours of daylight left, so we decided to drive a little further to see a black sand beach! Punalu'u beach was really beautiful! The black sand is course and sticks to you. We played around on the beach for a while, drove back up the west coast and stopped at a coffee plantation, tried some coffee, then went to our hotel to shower and find dinner. Our hotel room balcony overlooked the circle drive and the grounds where the hotel puts on a luau. We watched people file in to the luau and enjoyed the music. After showers we walked a couple of blocks down the road to Lulu's for dinner. We were thankful that we weren't outside at the luau when rain started pouring down during dinner. After dinner we both fell asleep early (again).
Saturday morning we got up early again and started driving up the west coast and around the north side of the island, back down the east side of the island to Akaka Falls. There we saw a beautiful huge waterfall. We drove around Hilo for a while afterwards, and then entered Volcanoes National Park! There we went to the visitor's center, saw their little movie, then drove over to the Jaggar Museum to view the crater of Kilauea.
From here we drove down to the Makaopuhi Crater. Here we hiked the Kilauea Iki Trail around the rim of Makaopuhi Crater, down through the crater, and back up. We went
from beautiful rainforest, down through the area that used to house hot lava and back up the steep side of the crater. This eruption happened in 1959 and produced the tallest recorded volcanic fountain. From the Iki trail we crossed the road to the Thurston Lava tube. The lava formed this natural tunnel.
We continued driving down the Chain of Craters Road, stopped to take a few pictures, and stopped at the end of the road, where lava had destroyed the rest of the road. We hiked over the lava, took a few more pictures, saw the Holei Sea Arch, and drove back up the Chain of Craters road to exit the park. We went all the way around the Kilauea area to the other side of the volcano. We parked at the end of a county road, and hiked out to the area that had been blocked off for live public viewing of the current lava flow into the ocean. We sat out on the hardened lava, waited until the sun went down and watched nature's free fireworks show! I kept wishing that we could get closer to the lava (we were about a mile away)! It was beautiful, and something I am really glad we took the time to do. On the 3 hour drive back to Kona, we stopped at a Subway for dinner. There I sang along to some Michael Jackson tunes with the sandwich artists. We then finished the long drive back to Kona.
Sunday morning was the Kona Marathon. Zac and I slept in, then walked over to the Kona sea wall for brunch at Lava Java where we had a delicious meal and watched the last of the marathon runners go by. After brunch we ran some errands and then flew back to Honolulu.
We had a FABULOUS time on our mini vacation to the Big Island! I loved seeing the drastically different beaches, the petroglyphs and the volcanoes!! CLICK HERE for lots more pictures from our trip!!
Me ke aloha,
RAWE
Yep, that's right - he was out before 8pm - typical day back after being underway for a while. 
Oklahoma explode!" Today's state of my living room reminded me of this hilarious quote. But, now you
