Aloha

I was lucky enough to take a little break from life and spend a week in Hawaii with my family. Here is a little overview. 

We spent the first few days in my lovely parents favorite spot of Maui.

I've been to Hawaii quite a bit in my life time, but never to the big island. We spent the second half of the week there, and it was most of our first time. We stayed on the Kona side of the island which looks like another planet because of all the rock. Here are a few pictures. 

 

This one is actually closer to Hilo, some neat little water falls we saw.

My favorite part of our little get away was the Helicopter ride. I love flying in helicopters. I feel like I'm five because every time we take off I get way excited. The take off is my favorite part. My father was kind enough to allow Jennica, Steve, Josh, and myself to go.

 

We flew over the lava flows, which is really quite amazing. We also got to fly out over the ocean, and the pilot flew really low so we could whale watch. We were able to see whales up close, flipping up out the water. Jen had been bugging us to go whale watching the whole week because we kept seeing them from the beach, she was pretty excited about that little addition to our helicopter ride.

  

There were miles and miles of hardened lava. You can tell how new it is because of the color. The newer lava flows are silver looking. The darker black usually means they are older.

It was really neat being able to see the lava actually flowing. It was flowing quicker than I'd imagined it would be. It's amazing seeing the different things that our earth creates. I love seeing the natural wonders of the world, and this was my first volcano experience were I actually got to see lava up close. Pretty amazing.

  

  

This house was situated at the bottom of the only hundred foot piece of road for miles and miles. The nearest road was about 20 miles away. Meaning, to get to this home you have to take a helicopter. It has been turned into a bed and breakfast because you can see the lava flow's from it. This was the only group of tree's left standing for quite a while, and somehow there is a house that survived in the middle of it. It's quite amazing.