Our Trip to the Big Island

Nick miraculously had 8 days off in a row so we decided to make the most of them and head to the Big Island of Hawaii. It was very different from the other islands but we really enjoyed our time there.

This is on top of Mauna Loa (14,000 ft thus the coats). There are several telescopes on the peak

Hawaii has the most active volcano in the world. We took a 4 mile hike in to see the volcano. Those aren't clouds, that's the steam billowing out of the volcano. We really wanted to see some lava, but it's not accessible right now.

This was the "trail" to the volcano. It was pretty rough and wound straight through the rain forest. It was technically closed, but we went anyway. It was really fun treking through the jungle.

Hawaii has several black sand beaches. This is one we visited.

We spent a day touring the Volcano National Park. That's a crater behind us caused from an explosion in the 1800's.

We stayed in a condo in Kona. This was our view. One of the few beaches was just to the left of our condo, we spent most of our time there.

We went scuba diving one morning. The waters off Kona are supposed to be some of the best since no rivers flow in the ocean on that side. We did 2 hour long dives at about 40 feet. We saw a lot of sea life.

The Kona Temple

This is me on top of Mauna Loa, we were higher than the clouds!