Guys - we just got back from 10 days in Hawaii and I can't wait to tell you all about it! Last Christmas Dan said "This year I turn 75 and Hawaii is the only state I've never visited. I want to go to Hawaii and I want you all to come too". A trip to the island wasn't in the plan, but how could we not make it work!?! Plus...who is sad about a trip to Hawaii?
As we always do, we already had the years vacations planned out - especially the summer travel so I suggested early November for the trip. September is too close to school starting, and October is when the school classrooms are through state testing and finally up and running....so I looked into November. The flights over the Thanksgiving weekend were 3x the price of earlier in the months so, that's how we landed on Nov 5-15. We left on a Wednesday morning and arrived back home again mid-day Saturday, over a week later. It meant we had 10 days on the Big Island and boy did we make the most of it!
We started our trip on the Kona side of the island. The Big Island is WILD! There is so much bio-diversity. You could drive 10 minutes and be in a totally different climate. The Kona side of the island is the "dry side". They get roughly 10 inches of rain per year there. It's sunny and warm (mid-80s in the day and low 70's at night, at least when we were there). To contrast, the Hilo side (only 40 ish miles away) gets over 100 inches of rain per year. There's a mountain (or really a volcano) between the two sides, and today they are getting 5+ inches of snow at the top. Just think of the climate change between those three parts of the island, and that's not it!
One day we drove to the North side of the island - an hour and a half drive from Kona and on that drive we drove through lava fields, dessert like areas, grassy rolling hills with cattle grazing and rainforests...seriously, drive 15 minutes and you might be in a totally different environment. I enjoyed it so much (and also realized how OLD we must sound to the girls...the number of times we talked about the typography or the weather was really quite impressive). LOL!
The kids tried their first shaved ice (overall review: "good, not great"). They also tried passionfruit based ice cream (overall review: "not good", but I personally liked it! I'm glad I made them split before I spent $25 on ice cream they didn't like).
We went to a few restaurants while we were there:
- Cheeky Tiki - great! Would recommend to others and would for sure go back.
- Don's Mai Tai Bar - great view, good Mai Tais. Worth it for a drink but maybe grab food somewhere else. Mom and Dad recommended this one to us and it was a good suggestion!
- Kona Inn and Restaurant - pictured above. We just grabbed a drink there one day when we were shopping in downtown Kona.
- Poncho and Lefties - Mexican restaurant downtown. We stopped there because they had a patio to watch the light parade planned at the start of the coffee festival. It ended up POURING rain right as the parade was starting so we didn't sit on the balcony in the end, but the idea was good. I'd rate the food as mid though.
The house we rented was perfect for us! It was steps away from Magic Sands Beach - one of the few sand beaches on the island. Most of the beaches are rocky (from the lava). Magic Sands wasn't a huge beach - especially after we visited Panama City Beach area earlier this year where there is beach for as far as the eye can see! But, we didn't need a huge beach. We just needed enough space to plop down 5 chairs and waves for the girls to play in. The waves were pretty rough there. We heard the lifeguards say this beach is top 3 in all of Hawaii for head and neck injuries, so it's no joke! But, it was fun to watch all the surfers early in the morning or to watch the local kids boogie board in the afternoons. The girls played it pretty safe, especially after they heard the lifeguard's warnings, but they for sure got a few good runs on their boards and loved playing in the sand. We could not have been closer to the beach and it was lovely to be able to just hop over there for 30 minutes or 2 hours and not feel like it was a whole rigamaroll to do it.
The beach was close, but I think the girls would say that their favorite thing about the house in Kona was either the geckos or the pool. They had so much fun catching the geckos (and this baby one even had my heart for a little bit there!). The pool at the house was great! It was warm and the house had all sorts of water toys and chairs and snorkels there for us to use. It might have been the best stocked house we've ever stayed at.
November in Illinois is pretty grey looking...but not in Hawaii! There were so many pretty flowers and new plants to look at. It was impossible to just walk past without taking a photo or two. So many pretty colors! I walked every single day on vacation, 2 or 3 miles each day and it was such a wonderful way to start the day. The time difference between Hawaii and home was 4 hours (the clocks moved back 4 days before we left so it was 4 hours, not 5. That meant that we had lots of early mornings and many early to bed nights (my fav!). The girls did great with the time change. The time change and the long travel days were the two things I was most worried about when it came to the kids...oh, and pulling them from school for 10 days. But, the girls did great with the time difference. Monday morning the first day back at school was a little tough, but I think its easier to come this direction (vs. going backwards in time).
We listened to the Guide Along app while we drove around the island and we learned so much! We learned about the history of King Kamehameha, the geology behind volcanos, the way cattle is raised on the island, why prices are the way they are and so much more! Mom and Dad stumbled on the Guide Along app a few trips ago - we used it in Acadia and Mom and Dad gifted me the Big Island tour for my birthday. We love it as a way to learn about the places we visit without needing to pay a tour guide. Highly recommend!
On our trip to the North side we stopped at the Pololu Beach - a black sand beach at the very top of the island. There was a short (but steep!) hike there down to the beach and I'm really glad we did it. The trail was less than a mile but there was about 400 feet of elevation change. It was beautiful at the bottom and I'd carried our sandwiches down with me so we all at lunch at the edge of the ocean. You don't get to do that very often!
There are 4 National Park Stamps to get on the Big Island, but with the 2025 government shutdown fully in place only 2 of the locations had staff working. We were able to visit Volcano's National Park (I might have cried if we weren't able to do that one! It's half of the reason we picked to visit this island) and Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historic Park where we got to learn about the indigenous people in Hawaii and how they lived when they arrived on the island. The statues above were from that park....I enjoyed walking around there and I think the kids learned a few things (I hope!).
If I had to recap Kona in just a few words I'd say warm, sun, beachy, exploring and adventuring and urban. Urban isn't quite the right word...it implies a much bigger city than Kona actually is, but this is definitely the side of the island for restaurants, shopping and beaching.
We left Kona on Monday and took the long road (ie: the southern route) to Hilo. We passed through Volcanos National Park but I'll do a whole post on that here next. On our trip to the other side we made two other notable stops - the PunaLu'u Bakery (the southern-most bakery in the United States) and the famous Black Sand Beach. The Bakery was a fun stop (thanks to the Guide Along app and Mom's double down recommendation to stop) - we got cookies and ice cream and malasadas (a Portuguese donut that was 100000% worth it in my opinion!)
I learned my lesson when I suggested we skip the Black Sand Beach (because, in my defense, we'd already seen a black sand beach earlier in the week...) - it turns out that if you've seen one black sand beach, it doesn't mean you've seen them all. LOLO! Erin voted we stop and I think we're all really glad we did. We saw our first turtles there, and the only seal we saw on the trip. If you're planning to visit and reading my blog, take my word and do not fall for the paid parking spots. If you go just a tiny bit further you'll park with the locals and save $15 per car. We didn't stay long because we were headed to the Hilo house and we still had a stop at Volcanos in the itinerary. We ate lunch at the beach, explored around a little bit and then headed back to the cars and kept on with our travel day.
All in all, Kona was amazing and I think we spent the perfect amount of time on that side of the island. If you visit, plan to spend some time driving. If you don't leave Kona or the resort areas you won't really get a sense for how diverse the island is. I feel like you can access a lot more from the Kona side, so if you're picking when to drive, do it on the Kona side.
