Mark and I wanted to go to Hawaii for our 10 year anniversary. We’ve never been. When I asked my parents if they would watch the kids, they said that they wanted to go too, and that they wanted to go in March vs June so we could whale watch…. So our 10 year anniversary trip involved all 3 kids and my parents. Not exactly the relaxing get away I was hoping for at all, and I think I went in to this trip with the wrong mind set from the beginning. I really wanted it to be a vacation, but when you have kids along, it’s not a vacation. It’s a trip. And it was a fun trip, it just wasn’t the romantic 10 year anniversary vacation I was envisioning. Hawaii, at least the Big Island, in general wasn’t what I was envisioning, but we still had a good time.
Jamison LOVES the birds that came on to our patio every morning during breakfast. And the first morning I had a lot of fun playing with my 70-200mm lens taking pictures of them. He would point to them and say “buh” when he saw them, which was cute. We stayed at my parents Wyndham timeshare which was really nice. My parents had a 2 bedroom unit and we had a two bedroom unit which worked out well. Abbie stayed in my parents unit with them, and Ben and J stayed with us, Ben in the bedroom and J in the other bathroom. It worked out well and we all slept pretty darn well. It’s nice to have full kitchens in these places so we can cook meals and breakfasts and have some of the comforts of home.
So I was envisioning Hawaii to be lush and green and flowery, and part of it were, but the majority of it wasn’t. The island is an active volcano after all, so there was LOTS of lava trails everywhere, which was also neat to see. The part that we stayed in, Kona, was kind of in the middle of the lava trails part, so you had the little town surrounded by lots of black, rocky landscape. There were areas where the lava was older and vegetation had grown on it more and then the north and east sides of the island were a lot more green than the Kona side.
The island isn’t that big, but it takes FOREVER to drive all the way around it. It’s only 2 way roads and the speed limit is usually 45 mph so it was so going. It took us over 2 hrs to get to Volcanoes National Park. But the drive did get prettier the further south we got.
We finally made it to the park and went to check out the active volcano and eat some lunch. The lunch was expensive and not great, but the views were good. I’ve heard it’s best to go to the volcano at night but that wasn’t an option since it was 2 hrs away and the kids were with us.
After lunch we headed to do a little hike of the lava tunnels. This was the rainforest-y landscape I was expecting there to be more of. The ferns were so neat and so was the tunnel. I got left behind a little because I got caught up taking pictures, as usual.
To be continued…
