The Trip Across the Big Island

It is now Sunday night and we are at the Four Seasons in Maui. Amy says the honymoon starts now! This is what she has been waiting for. I'm a little behind on posts so lets go back to Saturday. We were so sad to check out of the beautiful hotel so early but we had an all day drive ahead of us. It's about 3 hours from Kona to Hilo straight but we knew we would be stopping.

That's Mount Kea. It's the perfect place to look in space so there are several observatories on the top. You can just about make them out. From the bottom of the ocean where it starts to the top, it's the tallest mountain in the world.


The road North.


As we drove North, we also went up in altitude so the land became green again. The temp also dropped. Hot at the coast, we now needed jackets. In the town of Waimea we stopped at the Parker Ranch. Parker was this 19 year old kid from Boston who in the early 1800's went to work for the King of Hawaii as a cattle rancher. He ended up marrying the King's granddaughter and the King gave him land which eventually became 500,000 acres! They have since sold off about half. It's still in the family. It's a working cattle ranch. This is the main house built in the late 1800's. The last owner was a Parker but he was also a famous Broadway actor in the 1940's.


This was the original house from the earyl 1800's.


Inside the original house. The wood used is so rare today, it wouls cost $5mil to replace it.


Bet you can tell which way the wind always blows.


We had our first "plate lunch." Big thing in Hawaii. Usually 2 scoops of white rice, macaroni salad and green salad with 2 kinds of meat on top. The tradition is not charge over $7.


The next stop was the Waipio Valley. It's this valley where many people live without running water or electricity. They just live off the land. It's very hard to get into the valley so they are cut off from civilization.


They grow taro in the valley - used for poi, which we haven't tried yet.


Black sand beach.


Malasadas! Fresh hot donuts stuffed with cream. Don't know the history.



We then hiked to a waterfall and saw some crazy trees on the way.



We left around 9 and arrived at the Volcano Village around 6. We took a quick lap around Kilauea. Were blown away, ate dinner then did laundry. The next update will be all about the volcanoes. Please leave a comment so we can see who is checking us out! Mohalo.