Mike and I spent three wonderful days on the Big Island where I earned my first Junior Ranger badge of this trip! 

Geoff took us to the airport at a time I didn’t even know existed unless you’re a 21 year old that’s making poor choices – 3am. What a good friend. We got dropped off to wait for the doors to open. Then waited in line for TSA to even show up. Then waited to board. All to be on a flight for 30 minutes. Ah, the air travel life.  

When we arrived to the Big Island, we headed straight to the Volcanoes National Park! Read more about that adventure in the next post. We lasted as long as we could that day, but then ended up at our AirBnB pretty early around 5pm with a few groceries (pizza is life). We stayed at “D’s Basement”. It was very nice, but the name made it super easy to make jokes…

After sleeping for 10 hours, we had a boring breakfast of scrambled eggs with nothing because I didn’t want to buy butter or oil or spices… million dollar idea for someone out there: in tourist spots, the grocery stores should have a travel section for people, just like when you buy travel sized toiletries. That way I don’t have to buy and waste! Great idea, I know. Anyway, I digress…

We headed to some of the National Historic Parks for our second day on the Big Island. Pu’uhonua o Honaunau was our first stop that morning, where we explored Hawaiian Royal Grounds and a place of refuge for those who broke kapu; sacred laws and beliefs. It is believed people lived here in the 1400-1600s.

Pu’uhonua possessed extraordinary mana; spiritual power, from the 23 chiefs whose bones were buried in the temple there.

One kapu was that only the royals could step on the royal grounds. If you broke any kapu, you’d be executed. However, there is a Great Wall (18′ wide, 12′ tall, and almost 1000′ long. And it was built in 5 days. Those are some good workers.) that was along the shore. Should any kapu breakers make it here by swimming, they’d be absolved by a priest. During war, it also served as a sanctuary for children and elders. 

While there, I earned my junior ranger badge for this historic park. When we first got there, Ranger Emily was really nice and told me what all I needed to do, including play a game of konane (similar to Chinese checkers) and make a story using stamps. When I finished all the activities, the next ranger, Julie, was super rude about me even having the activity booklet since I’m not under 12. Listen up, I’m here and excited to learn, calm down. She was a great example of what rangers should NOT be like. Anyway, they (begrudgingly) gave me my stamp and badge. Their ‘tudes kind of took the excitement away though.

After that, we headed over to Kaloko-Honokohau Historic Park. This park didn’t impress us too much. Maybe we were tired out but it just didn’t excite us. It was mostly a beach and fish pond, that was closed off. It was also supposed to have a lot of turtles, but we didn’t see any. Bad luck in our timing, I guess. 

The bright spot was that the rangers there were super wonderful and friendly. She even did the ranger oath with me!

Then we went to Kona Brewing Company and then tried out a new brewery named Ola Brewing. We may have gotten too distracted there and ended up missing the third historic park…. oopsies.

We came back to Hilo pretty early since we planned on being back at the Volcanoes park for sunrise! 

After volcanoes (and earning my first NPS Junior Ranger badge!), we went to the south part of the island. We hiked to green sand beach which was a tough 5mile round trip hike but totallllllly worth it. It was stunning. And it’s one of two green sand beaches in the world! I guess it’s not as green as it used to be because tourists keep taking sand. Shame shame.

After the hike back, and a few PB&Js, we checked out black sand beach. Not quite as impressive and there were a gazillion people there. Kept heading back north, and tried a wine flight at the southernmost winery in the US, Volcano Wine. Thanks for the suggestion Kathleen!

Our airbnb host was awesome and let us come back to shower before we had to go to the airport. We surprisingly had extra time so we made it to Akaka Falls and Rainbow Falls before we had to be to the airport. These are two incredible state parks. Akaka Falls is 440′ tall, twice the height of Niagra Falls!

Next stop, Maui!