Hawaii

Hi everyone. We're back from our wonderful vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii. We had a GREAT time there with Aaron's parents. We visited a ton of places and saw a bunch of different beaches, historical sites, coffee farm, Volcano's National Park and so much more. But more than that, we had some time to ourselves, without the kids, and now are refreshed and recharged!
Here are some pictures from our trip.

Aaron with a statue of a Marlin. There was a huge Billfish tournament (something like a marlin I guess) while we were there and there were a ton of fishing boats and lots of giant fish!

Here is the black sand beach we went to. I'd never seen a black sand beach before. It's really neat! The black sand is lava that has basically been all ground up really fine, although it is more coarse than regular white sand.

This giant sea turtle was resting on the beach.

This is up at the crater at Kilauea in Volcano's National Park. We couldn't get any closer this time because that steam coming up out of the crater is sulfer gas. Didn't really smell that great!

On our way out of the park we stopped here. This looks like a rainforest, and really felt like it, but it is the enterance to a HUGE lava tube. We walked through it which was really cool.

We drove down to the coast to try to see the lava flow, but mostly what we saw was this...hardened lava from the previous eruption. Lava is everywhere!!!!

This is as close as we were able to get to the lava flow. The smoke in the picture is actually the steam from where the lava flow is entering the ocean. If we would have been there at night we could have seen the red/orange glow from the flow which would have been awesome...but...we were there in the daytime and didn't see anything. Bummer.

These are lava trees. It was made when the lava was flowing and flowed up and around a tree that stood standing. The tree actually dies or disentegrates or burns up or whatever it does, but it leaves this tree looking thing made of lava, with no actual tree inside. There's a hole in the side of this one you can see the lady sticking her head in.

Aaron's parents call this Secret Beach. It has a proper name, but it is pretty secret. All the beaches in Hawaii have to have public access, so to get to this one, you have to go through the security gate in this multi-million dollar neighborhood. (I guess the Dell's - from Dell computers - live down there somewhere). They only let a certain number of cars through a day and it is the MOST gorgeous beach I have ever seen. Perfectly manicured, perfect sand, perfect palm trees. Perfect. It doesn't get any better than this.

A lagoon looking swimming area at Secret Beach.

A sea turtle sunning on the rocks at Secret Beach. We saw a bunch of them on the rocks and on the beach itself. So cool!

Ahhhhh!

Another view of the water.