We spent a day on the Hilo side of the island, visiting waterfalls and the Mauna Loa nut factory\/farm.\u00a0 Hilo is much wetter than the Kona side of the island and there the rivers and streams flow straight to the ocean.\u00a0 While on our helicopter ride, we saw so many small falls leading to the cliffs and cascading off into the ocean.\u00a0 These are in the Waipio Valley, which one can drive down into, but it has a 25% grade!\u00a0 So we stayed on the main road, from which you pass several small (maybe 10-20 foot) waterfalls.\u00a0 There are no pull offs to take pictures of these pretty views either!<\/p>\n
We got an early start\u00a0because Rainbow Falls is named as such because of its propensity to create rainbows with the morning sun. Well, there was no morning sun this day.\u00a0 Oh well, no rainbows for me, but the falls were still very nice.\u00a0 Legend has it that King Kamehameha buried the bones of his father in the cave behind this fall.\u00a0 From here we drove to Boiling Pots, a place further up this stream where, when the water is flowing strongly enough, bowls in the rocks look like boiling pots.\u00a0 It must not have been rainy enough this week because the pots were barely at a simmer!\u00a0 As you continue up this road, there is another fall to stop and take in right beside the road.\u00a0 This one had pull offs.<\/p>\n
Lunch was worth a mention. It was hard to find really good food on the Big Island.\u00a0 Either the food was middle of the road or it was a chain.\u00a0 We did give in one night and eat at Outback just because we knew what food we would be getting.\u00a0 It was one of the better meals sad to say…Anyways, Cafe Pesto is an Italian restaurant in downtown Hilo and in an old building with a lot of character.\u00a0 We had really delicious, thin crust pizza there. I had a mixed green salad there with a garlic herb vinaigrette that was yummy too.\u00a0 I would recommend that restaurant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then we headed to the Mauna Loa\u00a0 macadamia nut farm and factory.\u00a0 I know we can buy Mauna Loa nuts here, but this is where they grown them and produce them.\u00a0 Fresh from the factory is never a bad thing!\u00a0 The factory tour is self-guided.\u00a0 But we got to see them make both flavored and chocolate covered products.\u00a0 We shopped in the store and had the chocolates sent home. Good thing too becuase the small can we brought home melted during our day in Honolulu and didn’t reconstitute themselves very well.<\/p>\n
After this excursion we visited ‘Akaka Falls State Park, which is home to a large waterfall and smaller cascade.\u00a0 The drive to the park is through an old sugar plantation. The open fields still have sugar cane growing in them, just no one there to harvest it.\u00a0 ‘Akaka Falls is\u00a0visible from the parking lot, but it is only fully seen from the trail and its lookout.\u00a0 The walk was nice and through a bamboo forest with lush vegetation.\u00a0Many of these plants\u00a0were Jurassic Park sized!\u00a0\u00a0They grow awfully large ferns in Hawaii…’Akaka Falls is a 442 foot fall\u00a0with several\u00a0whispy side falls.\u00a0 Well worth the sweaty walk through the jungle!\u00a0 On your way back you see Kahuna Falls, which is actually a cascade, but the stream there at the fall was\u00a0framed with vegetation and cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After this waterfall, we went back into Hilo for some souvenir shopping. Dan picked up a ukulele amongst our purchases.\u00a0 Then we had shave ice at Wilson’s by the Bay. A place you wouldn’t expect shave ice, but has recommended as being the best in Hilo.\u00a0 So, we had to try it.\u00a0 It was good, but the setting was odd — old bottles (not for sale), surfing t-shirts, some jewelry, odds and ends (some for sale and some not).\u00a0 I thought their flavors were good.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On our way back to Kona (2 hour drive from Kona to Hilo), we stopped at Laupahoehoe Point. This is where the tsunami of 1946 hit and wiped out a school.\u00a0 A total of 156 died in this tsunami.\u00a0 After the devestation, much of the town, but in particular the schools, were built topside to keep this from happening again.\u00a0 The village was built right by the ocean at the base of a cliff.\u00a0 A few homes are still down there, but the point was turned into a park.\u00a0 At this point, we had run out of daylight to continue sight seeing, so we headed back to Kona.<\/p>\n
We stopped in Waimea (not the same Waimea town on Kauai) on our way back for dinner.\u00a0 While highly recommended in our guidebook, this is a very local place.\u00a0 However, the service was friendly and the food was fabulous.\u00a0 We both got the BBQ.\u00a0 People in Hawaii can make brisket. What I had was delicious and Dan had the sample, which had brisket, pulled pork, and Portuguese sausage.\u00a0 Huge portions and yummy!\u00a0 Huli Sue’s sells Tropical Dreams ice cream and makes fantastic pies.\u00a0 Tropical Dreams ice cream is made in Hawaii and has a higher fat content than most ice creams.\u00a0 They only had chocolate, but that is all they needed!\u00a0 I do believe that was the best chocolate ice cream I have ever had. So good. Diana, if it hadn’t been 2 am,\u00a0 I would have called you!\u00a0\u00a0 Dan had the banana pie, which was so good with the chocolate ice cream.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another long day on the Big Island, but so much fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We spent a day on the Hilo side of the island, visiting waterfalls and the Mauna Loa nut factory\/farm.\u00a0 Hilo is much wetter than the Kona side of the island and there the rivers and streams flow straight to the ocean.\u00a0 While on our helicopter ride, we saw so many small falls leading to the … Continue reading Hilo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[21,12],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hawaii2009","tag-big-island","tag-hawaii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":403,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}