Visiting The Big Island of Hawaii

Aloha!

I wasn’t originally planning on blogging while I’m on my family vacation.  But, I’m an early morning gal.  The family is sleeping, I’ve been looking at my pictures and the weather is perfect.  I love learning on my vacations so thought I would share some of what I’ve experienced and learned.  This post is about our visit to The Big Island of Hawaii.

We landed at Hilo on The Big Island of Hawaii.  I finally asked a local to explain the whole name of The Big Island vs. Hawaii name.   The Big Island is officially The Island of Hawai’i.   And, it is larger than the rest of the islands combined.   Part of my confusion arose because Hawaii is also the name of the state which encompasses the archipelago of Islands known as Hawaii.  So, we are doing what the locals do and calling it The Big Island.

Other than being the largest island, The Big Island is known for having active volcanos in Hawaii.   Because of this, this island is still growing.

We did tour a park where you can see the Kilauea volcano.  Honestly, I was a little disappointed.  I really, really wanted to see flowing lava.  And, that’s what I thought was meant by an active volcano.  As you can see from the map above, the area close to the crater is closed.   And, if you look really close to the map above, you will see the water droplets.  It was drizzling on and off on our hike.

These signs were all over the place.  It was because the fumes are much stronger closer to the crater that we couldn’t go really close to the crater.

The park tour was an interesting hike where we saw many steam fissures.   The area smelled a little of sulphur but not as bad as I thought it would.   If the wind blew the steam in our direction, you would feel it’s warmth and that’s when you noticed the smell.

We went up and down many hills.  Do you see how green everything is?

I was actually surprised at how lush and green it was so close to the volcano crater.

I’m a sign reader.  Apparently this flowering plant helps vegetation get established.

When you are a sign reader in my family, you get left behind on family hikes!

Below is what we were able to see from one of the higher vantage points.  You could see steam coming from the crater.

This was a fun half day adventure.  The trails were easy and there were well marked trails of various lengths.  We saw all age groups here.

We didn’t spend much time on The Big Island.  Apparently there isn’t a ton to do and the volcano tours are the highlight.

We did enjoy walking through the Japanese garden beside our hotel in Hilo.  The cat lovers we are, totally enjoyed watching the locals feed numerous cats there!  A local resident put a huge serving of cat food about every 2 feet on the retaining wall.  There must have been at least 30 cats dining.

I did ask and this is a daily occurrence.  The cats are obviously well fed and they are also neutered to help control the population.  They were a little skittish and didn’t allow us to pet them.  But they looked so cute!

And, our view was breathtaking. We had no idea it was so pretty until the morning.  We arrived after 10pm and it was dark so didn’t see anything (plus we were tired from traveling all day).

Having been here a few days now, we have come to realize that ocean scenes with palm trees are normal. {sigh}  If only these scenes would be normal for us more often!

Thanks for dropping in and letting me share a little about our visit to The Big Island of Hawaii.  Check in  in the next few days.  I’ll share with you our visit to Maui!