Our visit to the Big Island

We just returned from a nice weekend on the Big Island. It's so nice to get away for a little while. Especially right now when our place is such a mess due to our home improvements :) The only part I don't like is leaving Gabby here by herself. I know she's just a cat, but she's our baby and she has a hard time when we leave.
Hawaiian Airlines as having a great sale on tickets so we got both of our round trips for just over $40 each. That's really a great deal. The only problem was we didn't have much of an option about what time we left in the morning so the flight we were on left at 5:30. Wonderful! I had to get up even earlier than I normally do. We left the house at 4:00.
I really enjoy going to the Big Island. It's very laid back and lots of open country. The temperature is much cooler which I love. We stayed at Kilauea Military Camp which used to be an Army base and was established in 1916, but has since been turned into a military recreation facility. They have really nice cottages for rent.

Sunday morning we were just waking up when we heard this rumbling start. Being from Alaska I've been through a few earthquakes and knew right away what it was. It only lasted about 30 seconds or so. This was the first earthquake that Sam had been through and I think he found it really interesting. No matter how many you've experienced though it's still a little unnerving. It didn't have much of an impact on our day and we went about visiting the island. It wasn't until we got back to the cottage at 3:00 that I checked my voicemail and had messages from Grandma Thorne, Mom and Kristy. That's the first time we realized that the earthquake had actually made the news. Watching the news that night we found out that Oahu had been without electricity all day. Thay had it much worse than us.

We visited some really beautiful places on the Big Island. Since we flew in so early that first day and couldn't get into the cottage until later that afternoon we had a lot of time to relax and really enjoy our day. That first day we went to Rainbow Falls. There are alot of waterfalls on the island, but this one was particularly beautiful. Sam was determined to get a view of the waterfall from the top, so we climbed over all the rocks to get right out to the waterfall. We were looking right down on it. It was awesome!
We were fortunate enough to get to see the lava flow from the volcano. A lot of times it's too far away to see, but we got within two miles of it and had a wonderful view of it. Unfortunately the camera wasn't able to capture it. It was getting pretty dark out and the exposure was just too slow. It's pretty cool when you go down to see where the lava is flowing, because they have closed the roads due to the lava. You're on the road and then it's just closed and there are hills of black lava. We walked out probably 1/2 mile and were able to get up on a huge lava boulder and we had a perfect view. The red lava and steam from it entering the ocean was very visible. Thankfully the camcorder picked it up pretty well.

We stopped by the Thurston Lava Tube. Amazing what nature can create.

If you are ever on the Big Island you must stop in at the Punalu'u Bakery. They have the best Sweet Taro Bread. As we pulled into the driveway we could already smell the bread baking. We visited the Black Sand beach which is getting smaller it seems. The sand there is so pretty. I suppose it ground up lava rock, but it just sparkles. Very pretty.


There were Yellow Ginger flowers everywhere it seems. As we were walking through the trees at Rainbow Falls we found this beautiful bouquet of flowers. They smell so sweet.

Well, we had a really nice time over our weekend. It's always nice to get away. We wondered what had been damaged in our house because of the earthquake, but it didn't look like anything had been touched. I'm convinced it was blown out of proportion. I'm just thankful that we were alright and no one was hurt.