Our Hawaiian Vacation-Hilo

We just returned from a wonderful vacation to the big Island of Hawaii. We spent 9 days exploring the whole island from the waterfalls, to the ocean, to the volcanoes. OUr first 3 days were spent in Hilo. This is considered the rainy side of the island. We rented a house (we traveled with another family so there were 8 of us) and used that as our base for exploring the waterfalls and volcanos of the island. I will do a whole post on the volcanoes, so here are some of the sights from Hilo...

The house we rented. We had a great view of the ocean and there was a lava flow right next to the house that the kids thought was really cool. The neighborhood also had it's own private champagne ponds...

These were small tide pools fed by the ocean that are actually quite warm

Dan really enjoyed snorkeling here and the kids loved seeing sea turtles that swam by

Hilo had many beautiful waterfalls that were just short walks, which was great for our crew. The first waterfall we visited was Akaka Falls


The walk to the waterfall was lush and beautiful

We were told the path was paved...we didn't know that it was all stairs, so no strollers on this walk

On the walk we saw these huge banyon trees

Inside the banyon tree

All four of the kids in the banyon tree

Ian stops to smell the flowers

Finally at the falls

They were beautiful!

Our family shot
We also visited Rainbow fall....It was a somewhat rainy day, so no rainbows, just a pretty waterfall


A short walk from the falls was an even bigger banyon tree


This one was really fun to explore

We also got some really yummy shaved ice in Hilo

Emma had a lot of admirers when she got the first shave ice

Ian thought it was really good!

Emma decided to play hide and seek

We saw some great waves on this side of the island, but no really good beaches because of all the volcanic rock.
Next up...our search for volcanos and Emma's elusive search for hot lava.