Liv came with me to see the sunrise but was still a little cold and tired.
Gee, I wonder why!
Later that morning we hopped on a lopsided plane (rows of 3 seats on one side but only 2 seats on the other) and flew to theBIG ISLAND, HAWAII.
The kids didn't bring any cell phones but those i pods sure came in handy!
The airport in Kona was so cute and little. Everything was outside with only ramadas like this one where Tess and the fam. is headed to go get our luggage.
After we got our bags we took off to see the sights. We would travel from black and desolate lava fields to lush tropical jungles like this one. It was amazing to watch the scenery change so drastically.
Some cool trees. The one on the left we called a tropical Christmas tree. From far away it looks like a fir tree but up close it is not at all like you think!
The weather that day was very cloudy, foggy and steamy. Here is a semi desolate area. See the lava on the side of the road and the trees trying to grow. They say it takes about 130 years for the forest to grow back on top of the lava flow.
Just in the nick of time we found this DELISH bakery we were told about. They supply bread to every store on the island. There were free samples but we had to buy eclairs and pie to fill our hungry bellies.
They were the Southern Most Bakery in the USA and maybe the YUMMIEST!
One of the main destination for that day was the famous Punalu'u Black Sand Beach!
Some fun quotes while driving- "Hey, there's a black cow on the black sand beach!"
"I wonder if there is a green cow on the green sand beach?!"
The sand is made of lava that has been bashed by the waves for centuries and ground up. There are new ones being made all the time.
Olivia checking out lots out the cool big lava rocks of different sizes and shapes that were fun to collect.
My lava boys.
Lava girl!
Hot Lava Women
Look at those ripples!
One of the most interesting creatures we had seen. What is it?
Upside down, still interesting.
Purple friends
Kids showing you the texture of the black sand.
Kinda sharp and not very fine but SOOO cool!!
Check me out!
Making a black sand castle.
Doesn't really work well!
You don't see that sign in Arizona!!
Our cozy big condo in the town called simply, Volcano.
This whole thing is ours for the night!
After we unloaded we drove around town looking for a place to eat. We actually went into one lodge, looked at the menu and took off. $9 for spaghetti with butter? We found Jim's Pizza or Kilewea Kitchen whatever you want to call it, and it was FANTASTIC!! Our waiter was super nice and apparently he is also a park ranger because we saw him the next morning working in Volcano National Park! Olivia was like, "Hey, that guy was our waiter last night!" We laughed!
We also laughed A LOT at dinner. Played lots of 20 questions about people like Dr. Miller, our waiter, Elvis or even a fork!
We had a funny conversation about wedding rings where the kids were wondering if you HAVE to give your spouse a wedding ring. I told them, no, there's no RULE about it. So Rustin said, "So what if I gave my girlfriend a baseball hat?" We all agreed that she probably wouldn't be his girlfriend or his fiance if that's what he gave her. Then we started expanding on the idea. What if you gave them a rock glued to a band OR tattooed a band around your finger, or implanted a diamond under your skin. Oh man.
Tropical front yard!
Chloe getting Cozy!
It's a good thing we had a fireplace because there was no central heating (a few wimpy space heaters that took forever to warm up) and the place was COLD inside and out! It was so fun to have a fireplace and snuggle and read by its warmth and light. But I never thought I'd go all the way to Hawaii to hang by a fireplace.
A view you don't see in Arizona! So steamy and so jungley,
Part of the living room.
As usual, Russ organizing everything in the kitchen! What a guy!
The main part of the living room!
All the kids vegging on the couch watching America's Funniest Home Videos after a lot of traveling. We just found out that the path down to the ocean where you can watch the lava fall into the ocean and create a huge plume of steam was CLOSED!!!! Supposedly there was a flash flood warning because of all the rain and they thought they might need the personnel manning the path somewhere else. WE WERE SO FRUSTRATED!!!!! It had been closed for five days and some locals told us that they think they were closing it just to save money! We debated braving it on our own but decided that the rain AND the FOG made it too dangerous. We might just step off into the ocean! Grrrr! This was one of the main reasons we wanted to go to the Big Island and it was the main event we had planned for the day! Would it even be open the next day? We hoped so because our next condo we had booked was on the other side of the island, 3 hrs away and we didn't want to come back!
