Tuesday, April 24, 2012
We started the day with a yummy breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast. The boys and I headed out to explore some of the areas around Hilo. Chris stayed behind to work on his resume and get his application in for a promotion at work. Our first stop was here at Punalu'u Beach. This beach is very well known as a favorite basking area for Hawaiian Green Sea turtles.
See the turtles?
After spending about an hour at the black sand beach, we headed back to the rainforest house and got some lunch. Chris was still working away, so I took the boys to see Rainbow Falls.
We hiked up to the top of the water fall. Check out these amazing Banyan Trees!
Hiking through the jungle.
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| Check out the size of this leaf! |
We got to the top of the waterfall and Logan REALLY wanted to go in the water. I had to convinve him that the water was too rough and he might get caught in a current and go over the edge! Crazy kid!
So I let them climb the big Banyan tree instead. : ) Much safer! LOL
We headed back to the house to change clothes and get Chris. I had read about this adventurous hike through a mile long lava tube. I thought it was inside the National Park, but as we learned later....it wasn't! This lava tube is a pristine, untouched tube with very few visitors and is not a known place. The directions were to pull off the highway near mile marker 23 and find the faint trail through the jungle about 30 feet from the road and 80 feet from a gravel driveway. So we did. It was very well hidden and we hacked through the jungle a bit. It was obvious that the owners have tried to disguise this trail more and hide the path. But we found it anyways and worked our way slowly back. Eventually after a few wrong turns, we found the hole in the ground!
We lowered ourselves into the cave opening and set off to explore this amazing place.
Neat stalactites, soda straws and sulphur deposits
It almost looked like a man-made cement tunnel. The sides were smooth and even in most of the tube.
I was so glad we saw this cave! It was really really special and we all felt like brave adventurers!
As we were coming up out of the tube, we heard some dogs barking and a man's voice yelled out "You are on private property!" WHOOPS! We yelled back our apologies and raced out of there as fast as we could!
We drove back home and had a few more adventures with the water pump going out during Logan's shower, cold water, and bugs in the pasta I was making for dinner. We ended up eating spaghetti sauce with bread and salad. The kids went to bed and Chris and I stayed up late finishing laundry, packing, and getting ready to leave in the morning. A busy day full of adventures!
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