A trip to the Big Island
For more than a month we planned to spend our Memorial Day weekend on the Big Island. The state of Hawaii consists of 8 islands (Ni'ihau, Kaua'i, O'ahu, Moloka'i, Lana'i, Kaho'olawe, Maui, Hawai'i), 7 of which are inhabited, 6 of which you can visit. A simple breakdown of the population is about 1.5 million total, 1 million of those being on the island of Oahu, and half of that million being in the city of Honolulu, which might explain why even though Oahu is only the 3rd largest in land size, it's still known as The Gathering Island. We decided to head over to the Big Island of Hawaii (where the state gets its name) from Friday night through Monday afternoon. We wanted to check out beaches, lava, horseback riding, helicopter tours, waterfall hikes, macadamia and coffee farms, and anything else we could find. And when Go! Airlines offers flights at $29 each way, it's hard to pass it up! So after I got off of work on Friday, we went to the airport with one bag of luggage and two backpacks, bound for fun and relaxation. We arrived 40-something minutes later on the East side in a town called Hilo. Promptly walking across the tarmac of the inter-island terminal to the rental car kiosks, Alamo had no record of my reservation, and I hadn’t brought any printout or confirmation number. Luckily, I did bring such information for the slightly more expensive Dollar/Thrifty folks, and they didn't have the car I reserved, so we got a free upgrade! Forty-five minutes down Highway 11 brought us to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, inside which is Kilauea Military Camp,
where we would spend the next 3 nights. We woke up Saturday morning starving and showed up early to a breakfast joint that opened at 630—not your typical tourists. Kilauea Military Camp used to be a training facility, and now everything is just a few steps up/away from 70s fashion and soldier-friendly layouts. But at $79/night, it's hard to beat, especially with a fireplace in the small living room, a kitchen with a microwave and dorm-sized fridge. We opted to start our explorations by heading down to the southernmost point of the US (which even has Key West beat!), South Point Beach, where you can find green sand. We stopped for lunch at Shaka Restaurant, the most southern bar in the USA, to dine on salad, fruit smoothies, and homemade pizza. (I felt touristy and bought a t-shirt!) We passed some nutty advertising on our way down South Point Road, courtesy of the Free Hawaii activists, who apparently want the state returned to its own k
ingdom, the way it was pre-statehood. There were old, ratty cars, some shanty homes, signs posted in trees, and other indications that these folks hoped to make their point through some sort of impoverished living. I'm not sure where the effectiveness with that will align, but as of now, Hawaii is still the 50th state! We parked our red Chrysler Sebring in the red dirt, covered our pasty white bodies in sunscreen, and started off on our 3-mile hike to the green sand beach. There were no markings anywhere to indicate we were heading in the right direction, but there were roads carved out from 4x4 vehicles there before us, and several Jeeps and trucks who stopped to offer us a quicker and easier way to get to our destination. We opted to enjoy the trade winds blowing against us, the red dirt covering everything from the bottom of our shorts on down, and the reason we bought trail mix and quart-and-a-half containers of water. When we finally reached the cause for our hike, we took a few pictures, noted the group of kids at the bottom of the cliff (it required a hike, and maybe some rock scaling, to get to the sand and water) and decided it 
looked like a high school party. We didn't bring our swimsuits, either, so there wasn't a real point in going all the way down, so we began the 3-mile return to the Sebring! We had more offers for a ride as we walked back, but this time the wind with its red dirt was at our back, and we had just a little more oomph to keep us trekking. And 3 miles isn't that far, anyway! Once we finished that hike, we got back on the road to Volcano, the name of the town where we stayed. But along the way, there was a sign for a Black Sand Beach. “Why not knock out two in one day?,” I thought while I drove and Sam slept. So I turned to follow the signs to yet another Hawaiian wonder that I had yet to see. My weary passenger woke up to notice a beautiful resort, golf-course-looking lawns, and all-around relaxing, beautiful scenery. I parked the car and we hopped out to walk around on a dark ground that was really quite odd. I expected it to leave my hands, shoes, and anything that touched it, charred, as if I’d been touching freshly printed newspaper. But it was just like any other sand, maybe not as sticky as white sand, because it had more of a really miniature-rock type characteristic. We didn’t stay long, as beaches aren’t really the preferred scenes for 
Casper-like skin, but I took some photos and walked down to the tourist kiosks to see what they had to offer. Back to the car, back to Volcano, time to get clean and go out to eat more than trail mix and wheat thins with peanut butter! We had passed a lodge in Volcano Village that looked quaint, like it might be a home cooking, quality restaurant. We drove up, and after looking at the prices on the menu, I was ready to drive off. I was discouraged by my soldier, though, as he was about ready to cross into the grumbling, cranky side of hunger, and he had made the executive decision that in preparation for a deployment to Iraq this fall, prices are less important than quality meals and memories, especially those on vacation. I agreed, but we both had our minds changed for us when we discovered that the lodge was booked for the night. Memorial Day weekend was a popular time for large groups, and they had all planned ahead. So much for the Aloha Spirit in this eatery! Off to Hilo, we decided, and I read a local magazine on the way to see if I could find any notes about recommended steakhouses. Uncle Billy’s, right on the bay, seemed to meet the criteria of locals and tourists alike. And lucky for us, this restaurant had plenty of seats available! While the furniture reminded me of something from The Golden Girls, a local man was singing and playing his guitar on a short stage right next to the patrons. There were people who had clearly come from far away, and those who we could tell had come from down the street. We had excellent service, good food, good drinks, and even a free dessert for all the waiting we had to do throughout the meal. It was definitely a nice end to an exhilarating but exhausting first day.
Sunday woke us up with a craving for a local breakfast, so we repeated the 45minute drive into Hilo for Ken’s House of Pancakes, which we’d passed on the way to Uncle Billy’s the night before. Think IHOP at 2am with all the scariest people you see, or those from your hometown you notice at local parades that make you wonder where they hide the rest of the year. This place was packed! There was a 20-minute wait for a table for two. My guess is that there would’ve been a shorter wait had the wait staff and patrons been within their recommended Body Mass Indices, but maneuvering around regular pancake and high-carb eaters didn’t prove kindly to those in line. Macadamia pancakes and chocolate milk for me, an omelet and coffee for Sam. $21 and about an hour later, we were off to see what the Lyman museum in downtown Hilo had to offer. Apparently, there was a textile exhibit, but not open on Sundays! We meandered around the town by foot, drove by the Veterans’ graveyard in the spirit of the holiday, got lost on a local
highway through some neighborhoods, and got back on our way to KMC. We opted to watch a movie in the interest of saving our energy for the lava hike we had planned for that evening. A visit to the gym for a boost of ambition, and we were off to travel down Crater Rim Road until we reached the its end. We decided that the theme of the day’s remainder would be lava, so it was lava-this, lava-that for everything. Port-o-potties became lava latrines. The moon was a lava lune (the French word for moon). Our flashlights, borrowed from our room at the KMC, were lava lamps, we planned to have a drink upon our return at the Lava Lounge, and so on. I was told to begin the hike about sunset, because any flowing lava that is to be seen is best done at night. There were marked paths to walk at the beginning of the dried lava flow of the late 70s, but the trail of yellow tags ended and didn’t recommend further exploration. However, there were 6 white poles sticking out of large hills of dried lava that continued on past the “End of Trail” sign, which I took as an invitation to continue. After all, this was one of the big reasons to visit this island. 
It’s like going to NYC and not looking at the Empire State Building or Fifth Avenue. So onward we went, past beacon 1, 2, 3, and a setting sun. Past beacon 4, 5, and golly, we’d been at this for an hour and a half, it was now pitch dark. Where the heck is the flowing lava? I see one more beacon ahead, but it’s taking between 15 and 20 minutes to walk each mile. The ground varies in height and stability. Some of the rocks are smooth, flat, and easy to traverse. Others have my ankles wobbling and feeling weak, are well broken-in by previous visitors and the sand-sized pieces aren’t ideal for holding all 120lbs of me for very long. Sam has let me lead, knowing it’s the best way for me to keep up. We encounter many hikers, some returning from hours at this, others heading in the same direction. A few stopped to talk to us and tell us what they’d seen. The consensus seemed to be that after the 6th and final beacon, it was 3.5-4 additional hours before we could see anything, and even then it wasn’t a particularly active day. It was 7:30pm, so the thought of carrying our bodies over virgin, slippery ground with a borrowed flashlight whose battery life was unknown, and either having to find a place to curl up for the night (not an easy feat given this jagged floor) or not return until the wee hours of the morning, just didn’t seem worth it. Are we both sure? As it turns out, yes. After all, we’re only a 40minute flight away. If there’s a particularly active day, we could try again, start before sunset, and see what the hype is all about. And so we turned around, joined the teams moving back to their cars. We took about 30minutes longer on the return walk because moonlight and our lava lamp being the guides, but our car seemed to be one of the furthest out. No cars were parked around us anymore, so of those who arrived at the same time we did, we must have stayed the longest. There were about 40 cars remaining (originally there were probably 120+), so probably 70 or so people spending the night in the heat of new earth forming.
Monday, Memorial Day, we packed our things and poked around KMC a little before heading back to Hilo for lunch and the airport. We learned that very few airports sell gum anymore, because their profit margin isn’t enough to recover the costs of maintenance required for scraping gum off of tables and the ground. And back to Honolulu for us!
Copyright 2007 Olivia R. Reed
For more than a month we planned to spend our Memorial Day weekend on the Big Island. The state of Hawaii consists of 8 islands (Ni'ihau, Kaua'i, O'ahu, Moloka'i, Lana'i, Kaho'olawe, Maui, Hawai'i), 7 of which are inhabited, 6 of which you can visit. A simple breakdown of the population is about 1.5 million total, 1 million of those being on the island of Oahu, and half of that million being in the city of Honolulu, which might explain why even though Oahu is only the 3rd largest in land size, it's still known as The Gathering Island. We decided to head over to the Big Island of Hawaii (where the state gets its name) from Friday night through Monday afternoon. We wanted to check out beaches, lava, horseback riding, helicopter tours, waterfall hikes, macadamia and coffee farms, and anything else we could find. And when Go! Airlines offers flights at $29 each way, it's hard to pass it up! So after I got off of work on Friday, we went to the airport with one bag of luggage and two backpacks, bound for fun and relaxation. We arrived 40-something minutes later on the East side in a town called Hilo. Promptly walking across the tarmac of the inter-island terminal to the rental car kiosks, Alamo had no record of my reservation, and I hadn’t brought any printout or confirmation number. Luckily, I did bring such information for the slightly more expensive Dollar/Thrifty folks, and they didn't have the car I reserved, so we got a free upgrade! Forty-five minutes down Highway 11 brought us to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, inside which is Kilauea Military Camp,
where we would spend the next 3 nights. We woke up Saturday morning starving and showed up early to a breakfast joint that opened at 630—not your typical tourists. Kilauea Military Camp used to be a training facility, and now everything is just a few steps up/away from 70s fashion and soldier-friendly layouts. But at $79/night, it's hard to beat, especially with a fireplace in the small living room, a kitchen with a microwave and dorm-sized fridge. We opted to start our explorations by heading down to the southernmost point of the US (which even has Key West beat!), South Point Beach, where you can find green sand. We stopped for lunch at Shaka Restaurant, the most southern bar in the USA, to dine on salad, fruit smoothies, and homemade pizza. (I felt touristy and bought a t-shirt!) We passed some nutty advertising on our way down South Point Road, courtesy of the Free Hawaii activists, who apparently want the state returned to its own k
ingdom, the way it was pre-statehood. There were old, ratty cars, some shanty homes, signs posted in trees, and other indications that these folks hoped to make their point through some sort of impoverished living. I'm not sure where the effectiveness with that will align, but as of now, Hawaii is still the 50th state! We parked our red Chrysler Sebring in the red dirt, covered our pasty white bodies in sunscreen, and started off on our 3-mile hike to the green sand beach. There were no markings anywhere to indicate we were heading in the right direction, but there were roads carved out from 4x4 vehicles there before us, and several Jeeps and trucks who stopped to offer us a quicker and easier way to get to our destination. We opted to enjoy the trade winds blowing against us, the red dirt covering everything from the bottom of our shorts on down, and the reason we bought trail mix and quart-and-a-half containers of water. When we finally reached the cause for our hike, we took a few pictures, noted the group of kids at the bottom of the cliff (it required a hike, and maybe some rock scaling, to get to the sand and water) and decided it 
looked like a high school party. We didn't bring our swimsuits, either, so there wasn't a real point in going all the way down, so we began the 3-mile return to the Sebring! We had more offers for a ride as we walked back, but this time the wind with its red dirt was at our back, and we had just a little more oomph to keep us trekking. And 3 miles isn't that far, anyway! Once we finished that hike, we got back on the road to Volcano, the name of the town where we stayed. But along the way, there was a sign for a Black Sand Beach. “Why not knock out two in one day?,” I thought while I drove and Sam slept. So I turned to follow the signs to yet another Hawaiian wonder that I had yet to see. My weary passenger woke up to notice a beautiful resort, golf-course-looking lawns, and all-around relaxing, beautiful scenery. I parked the car and we hopped out to walk around on a dark ground that was really quite odd. I expected it to leave my hands, shoes, and anything that touched it, charred, as if I’d been touching freshly printed newspaper. But it was just like any other sand, maybe not as sticky as white sand, because it had more of a really miniature-rock type characteristic. We didn’t stay long, as beaches aren’t really the preferred scenes for 
Casper-like skin, but I took some photos and walked down to the tourist kiosks to see what they had to offer. Back to the car, back to Volcano, time to get clean and go out to eat more than trail mix and wheat thins with peanut butter! We had passed a lodge in Volcano Village that looked quaint, like it might be a home cooking, quality restaurant. We drove up, and after looking at the prices on the menu, I was ready to drive off. I was discouraged by my soldier, though, as he was about ready to cross into the grumbling, cranky side of hunger, and he had made the executive decision that in preparation for a deployment to Iraq this fall, prices are less important than quality meals and memories, especially those on vacation. I agreed, but we both had our minds changed for us when we discovered that the lodge was booked for the night. Memorial Day weekend was a popular time for large groups, and they had all planned ahead. So much for the Aloha Spirit in this eatery! Off to Hilo, we decided, and I read a local magazine on the way to see if I could find any notes about recommended steakhouses. Uncle Billy’s, right on the bay, seemed to meet the criteria of locals and tourists alike. And lucky for us, this restaurant had plenty of seats available! While the furniture reminded me of something from The Golden Girls, a local man was singing and playing his guitar on a short stage right next to the patrons. There were people who had clearly come from far away, and those who we could tell had come from down the street. We had excellent service, good food, good drinks, and even a free dessert for all the waiting we had to do throughout the meal. It was definitely a nice end to an exhilarating but exhausting first day.Sunday woke us up with a craving for a local breakfast, so we repeated the 45minute drive into Hilo for Ken’s House of Pancakes, which we’d passed on the way to Uncle Billy’s the night before. Think IHOP at 2am with all the scariest people you see, or those from your hometown you notice at local parades that make you wonder where they hide the rest of the year. This place was packed! There was a 20-minute wait for a table for two. My guess is that there would’ve been a shorter wait had the wait staff and patrons been within their recommended Body Mass Indices, but maneuvering around regular pancake and high-carb eaters didn’t prove kindly to those in line. Macadamia pancakes and chocolate milk for me, an omelet and coffee for Sam. $21 and about an hour later, we were off to see what the Lyman museum in downtown Hilo had to offer. Apparently, there was a textile exhibit, but not open on Sundays! We meandered around the town by foot, drove by the Veterans’ graveyard in the spirit of the holiday, got lost on a local
highway through some neighborhoods, and got back on our way to KMC. We opted to watch a movie in the interest of saving our energy for the lava hike we had planned for that evening. A visit to the gym for a boost of ambition, and we were off to travel down Crater Rim Road until we reached the its end. We decided that the theme of the day’s remainder would be lava, so it was lava-this, lava-that for everything. Port-o-potties became lava latrines. The moon was a lava lune (the French word for moon). Our flashlights, borrowed from our room at the KMC, were lava lamps, we planned to have a drink upon our return at the Lava Lounge, and so on. I was told to begin the hike about sunset, because any flowing lava that is to be seen is best done at night. There were marked paths to walk at the beginning of the dried lava flow of the late 70s, but the trail of yellow tags ended and didn’t recommend further exploration. However, there were 6 white poles sticking out of large hills of dried lava that continued on past the “End of Trail” sign, which I took as an invitation to continue. After all, this was one of the big reasons to visit this island. 
It’s like going to NYC and not looking at the Empire State Building or Fifth Avenue. So onward we went, past beacon 1, 2, 3, and a setting sun. Past beacon 4, 5, and golly, we’d been at this for an hour and a half, it was now pitch dark. Where the heck is the flowing lava? I see one more beacon ahead, but it’s taking between 15 and 20 minutes to walk each mile. The ground varies in height and stability. Some of the rocks are smooth, flat, and easy to traverse. Others have my ankles wobbling and feeling weak, are well broken-in by previous visitors and the sand-sized pieces aren’t ideal for holding all 120lbs of me for very long. Sam has let me lead, knowing it’s the best way for me to keep up. We encounter many hikers, some returning from hours at this, others heading in the same direction. A few stopped to talk to us and tell us what they’d seen. The consensus seemed to be that after the 6th and final beacon, it was 3.5-4 additional hours before we could see anything, and even then it wasn’t a particularly active day. It was 7:30pm, so the thought of carrying our bodies over virgin, slippery ground with a borrowed flashlight whose battery life was unknown, and either having to find a place to curl up for the night (not an easy feat given this jagged floor) or not return until the wee hours of the morning, just didn’t seem worth it. Are we both sure? As it turns out, yes. After all, we’re only a 40minute flight away. If there’s a particularly active day, we could try again, start before sunset, and see what the hype is all about. And so we turned around, joined the teams moving back to their cars. We took about 30minutes longer on the return walk because moonlight and our lava lamp being the guides, but our car seemed to be one of the furthest out. No cars were parked around us anymore, so of those who arrived at the same time we did, we must have stayed the longest. There were about 40 cars remaining (originally there were probably 120+), so probably 70 or so people spending the night in the heat of new earth forming.Monday, Memorial Day, we packed our things and poked around KMC a little before heading back to Hilo for lunch and the airport. We learned that very few airports sell gum anymore, because their profit margin isn’t enough to recover the costs of maintenance required for scraping gum off of tables and the ground. And back to Honolulu for us!
Copyright 2007 Olivia R. Reed
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