The Big Island with Harper

Harper and I finally went on our trip. We went to Hawaii, specifically the Big Island (called the island of Hawaii). Not to be mistaken for the main island (which is what Harper kept telling people). 

Here were a few of our adventures:

Boogy Boarding Death Run

Harper expressed some interest in Boogey Boarding. I was like, "Heck Yeah!", so on the day we planned to be our chill beach day, we rented some boogie boards and followed the advice of the employee who told us we could go over to Honl beach, a 4 minute walk down the street.

We get to the small beach and there are about a dozen kids boogie boarding out in the water. Sounds good, right?

I go out and try to catch a wave and as I'm flailing aorund I slice my foot open on the water. I try to ignore it and attempt to catch a few more waves. The kids come by me a couple times and tell how that this is a very dangerous place to be becaues the waves push you into the reefs; so you have to be able to steer yourself away from them. I finally got the hint and left. Luckily Harper stay in the tamer area and didn't get thrashed.

Harper had to put her medical assistant skills to use to fish sand out of my cut with a plastic knive. Very sanitary.

Later in the day, we did find a very sandy fun beach to get some more boogie boarding in.

"If I see that employee again, I'm gonna give her a knuckle sandwich."

Beware the Nene

Harper and I kept seeing signs everywhere about nenes. Nene crossing, don't feed the nenes, don't touch the nenes, don't look at the nenes (I made that last one up). But we had no idea what a nene was.

We started getting freaked out about what a nene was. Eventually we found out a nene is Hawaii's goose; one of a few of their endangered animals. Phew

Harper won't take pics with me

Apparently, I'm a bad photographer, because Harper doesn't want to be in any of my selfie pics. Her face says it all (in most of the pics in this post).

Dark Chocolate and Nuts

In a strange moment of our trip, we made a stop at Target to pick up some supplies and snacks. I left Harper in charge of picking out snacks. It wasn't til we left that we noticed everything we bought had dark chocolate and nuts in it. It was a little odd. Like Harper was subconsciously craving it.

Snorkeling

We took an excursion to captain cook bay to do some snorkeling. Really nice, fun place.

Just come - Jaden/Carson

Hawaiian History Course

Harper didn't realize this trip doubled as an in-depth Hawaiian History crash course. the first hotel we stayed at was the Royal Kona Resort and it had paintings of all the Hawaiian Royalty, starting with King Kamehameha I, the first King to unite all the Hawaiian islands. 

Coincidentally, one of our excursions was a hike to the  Pololū Valley Lookout and the restrooms happened to be right next to the King Kamehameha I statue. 

But that wasn't even the weirdest part. The day we were checking out of the Royal Kona, happened to be "King Kamehameha" day; complete with a festival and parade. So, we watched about a billion horses go by (seriously, I think there are more horses on Hawaii than in Utah).

Pretty crazy.

Volcano

The volcano Kilauea, has been quite active with repeated periods of little eruptions called fountaining. I was super hoping we would catch it. And it did happen the first day we were there but I wasn't paying attention. So, I signed up for notifications and started checking the live feed. The last day of our trip was the day we had scheduled to visit Volcano National Park. I had high hopes because it was bubbling up, oozing lava and occasionally splatting lava out.

Unfortunately nothing happened. To be clear, it was a really cool place. The hikes and views were amazing. And we even hiked at night through the steam vents and that was really neat.

What was frustrating was the day after we left, kilauea went nuts and gave a full show. Lava thousands of feet in the air. Oh well.

Honorable Mentions

Here are some other fun things/moments worth mentioning:

Exploring some lava tubes, paddeboarding at a private waterfall (they don't let you do that at the public ones, Pololū Valley trail, eating raw coconut from the ground (stranger on the beach opened a couple and offered us some), black sand beach, white sand beach, green sand beach.