A couple weeks ago, the three of us took our first big family vacation to Hawaii. We stayed on the big island since none of us had been there before, and it was totally different than what we expected. We had heard that it was very different from the other islands, but we didn't realize how big the difference was.
We stayed in the Waikoloa Beach area, a few miles north of Kona, on the half of the island that feels like a desert. There is lava and grasslands as far as you can see. All of the resorts are on the Kona side of the island, since they have the best beaches (although they are teeny). Although at times it seemed desolate, it was still paradise.
We did take a road trip around the island for a few days to see all the sites beyond the resorts. This was my favorite part of the trip. Just a few miles south of Kona the terrain starts to feel more like the Hawaii I knew before - jungle. We wanted to check out the active volcano Kilauea and Hilo, and then a few other stops along the way.
First we drove to South Point, the southernmost point in the United States, and then stopped at a black sand beach.
Kilauea was amazing! It's not the typical volcano that you would expect, and when we got there I didn't even realize that we were on a mountain... it's a short mountain :) The history of this volcano is amazing, and I can go on and on with reasons why, but I'll just say that it's said to be the most active volcano on earth and leave you with the Wikipedia article to read if you want to, and of course a few pictures (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilauea). />
Hilo was a cool town for two reasons: the waterfalls, and because it's the hometown of BJ Penn. We tried to hunt him down to get a picture with him, but the closest we got was a picture of the outside of his gym. After that we drove through the cowboy town of Waimea and back to our hotel to relax. The big island might not by 'typical' Hawaii, but there are definitely some really cool things to do there.
