So we finally did it. We went on a trip. I have been feeling a little stir crazy lately and after Deven's last rotation he was feeling a little nutty too. So we decided a trip to the Big Island was just what we needed. Deven only had 3 days off but we decided to go for it so we did. I tried to post way to many pictures cause I was so excited to have gone somewhere and I was having a really hard time getting everything to work so there are actually 2 posts to this entry and just do the best you can with the pictures and wording. I was getting way to frustrated and decided this was going to have to work. I will start at the beginning and hopefully you can follow. This is us at the airport waiting for our flight, we left at 4:30 a.m. we wanted to make sure we would have 3 full days on the island. Gracie was just as excited as we were. 
After we landed we got our rental car and head around the coast. The big island is so unique in the sense that it has over 13 climates. We headed up to Waimea. It was so beautiful. Deven and I thought it reminded us a little of Ireland lots of green rolling hills, but mostly we loved the fact that it was cold. 
Yes, there is snow on Hawaii. We had to take a picture to show everyone. The Big Island can get snow on its peaks. We couldn't drive up to it, you had to have 4 wheel drive, but we loved looking at if from a distance. After spending the morning in Waimea we drove to Waipio Lookout. This was a great view of the coast line with black sand beaches. We then continued around the Island. I will try to explain our trip in this part and the next blog entry holds most of the pictures. 
We headed around the island heading toward Hilo. A long the way we stopped at some amazing waterfalls. It was fun to do some hiking. We learned that Hilo is the rainiest city in the United States even more rainy than Seattle. So we were not surprised at how many waterfalls there were and how lush the vegetation was. From there we headed up to Volcano State Park, as that is where were staying. We rented a little cabin up there. We ended up being 4000 ft in elevation. A friend had told us it would be cold but we were not prepared. It was cold and our light weight jackets didn't do the trick. Gracie and I were being babies so we had to buy hoodies for our hiking the next day. We spend the whole day Thursday hiking and looking at volcano's. It was a nice change from our everyday life. We hiked all morning across the craters were there were still active steam vents. We also got to hike through lava tubes Gracie thought these caves were so cool. That night we drove down to the coast were the active lava still flows into the ocean. This was cool as we got there just before sun down. As the sun goes down the steam cloud turns pink and red. It reminded us of fire works. We stayed for a while and then hiked back to our car after dark. The next day we had to head back to Kona to go on a whale watching adventure. It was really cool as we saw whales and dolphins, but I got sea sick. and so I had to spend most of the trip sitting. Deven and Gracie loved it. Gracie thought the whales and Dolphins were so cool. She was even the first to spot some of the whatles. Are tour guide was impressed. After our whale adventure we had just enough time spend some time in down town Kona. We enjoyed dinner and of course a shaved ice. By the end of the day Gracie finally passed out. She slept all the way home. We had a lot of fun and I think it was just what we both needed. So the next post contains some pictures and once again sorry for the messy post. I hope you can make some sense out of it.
