Morgan & Eric: June 2016

HAWAII

May 22 - May 28, 2016

Please forgive my rudimentary blogging abilities. This is basically just a random compilation of pictures from our trip to Hawaii, with a little summary of some of our adventures. First and foremost, we had a blast!! We spent two days on the eastern side of the island, which is a big rainforest with lots of waterfalls. We stayed in Hilo. It is a quiet town with very few tourists. It was so pretty and fun to explore. We went to Volcano National park on Monday and did an 8 mile hike. On Tuesday, we drove down the eastern coast and went to 2 unique beaches--black sands beach and green sands beach. Both of them were really cool, but I think Eric and I both liked the green sands beach the best! Then Eric went cliff diving at the southern most point of the United States.

We spent the rest of our vacation in Kona, which is on the western side of the island. On Wednesday, we went snorkeling and saw some incredible fish, and an eel. Thursday, we hung out at the beach and then in the evening, we went on a manta ray night dive. It was SO cool to see manta rays up close, but unfortunately the boat ride got me pretty sea sick. On Friday we hiked to a beach that we had all to ourselves. In the evening, we drove up to Mauna Kea which is the mountain on the island. We intended to stargaze, but we happened to choose one of the few nights out of the year that was cloudy so we couldn't see anything! We still had a lot of fun on our drive together though. On Saturday, we went to a state park called the City of Refuge, where we got to learn about traditional Hawaiian culture and see some interesting Hawaiian artifacts. The whole state park was on the beach. There were no complaints about that!! Saturday night we got back on a plane to come home, which was definitely the hardest part of the vacation. All in all, we had so much fun together and it was a much needed getaway from our busy lives!

Volcano National Park--View of the crater from our hike

Aka Falls

Hilo

Green Sands Beach

Black Sands Beach

Ice cream and donuts for breakfast. We are children at heart.

South Point: southern most spot in the United States. Eric went cliff jumping into the ocean. As we were heading back to the car, we saw this sign. Oops!!