Hawaii Part 1

I returned home Friday afternoon from a 12 day vacation.  I was invited to go along with my best friend of over 30 years.  She was invited by a wonderful lady that has daughters that live on the Big Island and had also invited my friends father to go along.  There was a house available for us and another daughter of the same lady that invited us also stayed there.  My friends husband was unable to go and mine said I better go because he really does not want to visit Hawaii.

It was a very long trip from Michigan.  We had to be at the airport by 8:30 AM Monday the 20th for our first flight.  There were two more flights, one out of Minneapolis and the last one out of L.A. which was five hours across the ocean.  We flew into Kona at 5:30 PM Hawaiin time, 10:30 PM Michigan time.

The house we stayed in is in Waikoloa and this is the view we saw every morning looking off the deck/porch, which is called a Lanai.

 Some mornings like in the picture above we could see Maui above the clouds.

Our first day of sight seeing we traveled up the North Western Kohala Coast.  Our first stop was in Kapa'au where the original statue of King Kamehameha.1 stands.  King Kamehameha.1 was born in North Kohala.  King Kamehameha.1 conquered the Hawaiian Islands and established the Kingdom of Hawai'i in 1810.  I have decided to give you a history lesson along with the pictures.

We continued to travel up the Kohala coast from our first stop.

 We next stopped at the Pololu Valley Lookout.  I took over 500 pictures while I was in Hawaii but I am trying to just show you a couple of each area.  Key word is trying.

 All during our day trips we saw so many beautiful flowers, plants and trees.  The Royal Poinciana was one of our favorite and the next picture was the first one we saw and pulled off the road to take a picture of it.

 The next plantings were in the courtyard of the restaurant we stopped to eat lunch at.

 

We ended our day at a Lu'au on this beach.

The waves were really high that evening.

The sun sets around 7:00 PM so my evening pictures did not show up great but the music and the dancing was really pretty.

So that is it for days 1 and 2.  I will try and share a little of each day over the next few days.  Have a wonderful week!