Hawaii '17: Waipi'o Valley, From the Ground

Sunday morning Adam and I decided to head for Waipi'o valley. It was basically on the exact other side of the island from us. We drove through ranch country on the slopes of Mauna Kea. There is a road down to the valley but is 4 wheel drive only. I was a little leary of driving down so we started to walk. Yeah, that wasn't a very good idea, so Adam went back up to get the jeep. That was a much better idea. Once I saw someone towing a boat down the road, I decided it was ok to drive. We turned the 'wrong way' at the bottom of the hill and went back into the 'natives' area, where people live. I don't think they like visitors much, so we caught sight of the waterfall and drove back through the river, to the beach. Because it was Labor Day weekend, the beach was pretty busy with locals. There was a huge party of people who drove their atv's down and had music and food going. It was really fun. The river was a great place for the kids to play without getting pummeled by the waves on the beach. The black sand beach was pretty much unbelievably amazingly beautiful. We walked the entire beach (really glad we drove down...)

Every time you go down to the beach, you find tsunami signs. 

The river we forged a few times in the back of the valley. It was just like a mountain stream in the Smokey Mountains. Except it empties into the ocean. 

A little friend who was interested in our lunch

I think I still have black sand stuck under my toe nails.

Listening to the locals behind us was highly entertaining. 

I realized how different the ocean looked through my polarized sunglasses versus my phone camera, so I took a picture through my sunglasses. Worked pretty well!

Hawaii '17: Pictures from the Road

Pictures from our drive to and from Waipi'o

From Route 190, up in ranching country 

Looking to the west. You can see the different lava flows. The little hump in the ocean on the left is Maui

Better shot of Maui

And the South part of the island on our way back from Hilo

The plume of smoke on the water is the lava meeting the ocean

Hawaii '17: More Valleys and Waterfalls

We explored a few more valleys with crazy high waterfalls. It was beautiful. The helicopter has a 'soundtrack' of music that plays when people aren't talking. Some of the songs are really well timed. They played an Enya song at the waterfalls, which I thought was kind of funny to be playing Celtic music while hovering over Hawaiian waterfalls. But it set a good mood, nonetheless. 

Hawaii '17: Waipi'o Valley From Above

Waipi'o Valley is, I think, the largest valley on the island. Back in the day, it was the most populous place on the island, where the king lived. They said there may have been up to 5,000 people living in the valley hundreds of years ago. Today there are about 50 families. 

Hawaii '17: Hilo and All the Green

After the volcano action, we flew over to Hilo's airport to stop for a refuel. Hilo is the wettest city in the US, averaging about 130" a year. And it's actually not the rainiest place on the island, a spot just north west of Hilo gets like 240" of rain a year. Thanks to the northeasterly tradewinds and Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, the east side of the island gets 100+ inches of rain a year, while areas north of Kona get 10-20" of rain a year. So we were really, really lucky to get a clear day to fly over Hilo and the east side of the island.

Macadamia farms with pine tree wind breaks

The surf was very calm that day, too. The pilot said it's usually pretty choppy with whitecaps.

These are called gulches, little valleys created by the volcanoes. On the east side they are very green. On the west side, they are very black.

We drove on the road through this one later in the week.

Hawaii '17: Mauna Kea, Above the Cloud

Some fly by of the summit of Mauna Kea. It was almost always above clouds, so you had to get above the clouds to see it. If you look very closely, you can see a few of the observatories at the top. (more on that to come!)