Our Hawaiian Adventure, Pt. 3

Wow! I had no idea it was going to take me so long to recap our family vacation to Hawaii! Hope you're still hanging in there with me!

On our second full day in Hawaii, we all got up very early, again. We decided to drive up north into the mountain range. The drive was out-of-this-world! We saw so many interesting things! I felt like I was snapping pictures every few seconds. I just couldn't get enough of it! There was definitely lots of "oohing" and "aahing" going on!

Here's the road that lead us up into the mountains. It started out being overcast, but as the day worn on, pretty blue skies appeared. It was so neat how we went from a tropical region to a rainforest region in a couple of hours.

We spotted this lone donkey at the top of a hill, so I had Chris pull the car off to the side and take a picture.

Who would have ever thought that you'd see a wild TURKEY along the side of the road! Definitely not ME!

Here's a little rainy town that we entered called Hawi. The mountain, literally, creates it's own rain through convection. Isn't that fascinating?

Yes, we even saw mounds of huge cacti along the side of the road.

See that big piece of land that's rising out of the ocean? That's MAUI...about 30 miles away!

You've got it...we even saw cows grazing! Have you noticed how the landscape has changed dramatically?
Of course, we had to stop at the birthplace of King Kamehameha. It's in a town called Kapa'au. Here he is in all his glory! A little scary looking, don't you think? June 11th is King Kamehameha Day, so we just missed it. On that day, his statue is piled high with leis and other kinds of decorations. I do need to add here that before paying a visit to see ol' King Kamehameha himself, we stopped by an ice cream shop called Tropical Dreams. They serve the BEST ice cream I think I've ever had! You could easily tell it was loaded with fat and calories, but who cares! It was worth every yummy bite!

Here's Brittany striking a pose on the grounds where King Kamehameha's statue was located.

Yer another beautiful Hawaiian flower!


I still haven't reached the end of our journey into the mountains, but I'll save the rest for another day. There's so much left to tell! Hawaii is filled with wonder and enchantment and I want to make sure I don't miss a thing! Hope all of you have a FUN and safe Labor Day weekend. See ya next week!



P.S. Please say a prayer for Brittany. Today is her first college cross country race and she's excited and NERVOUS! Sure wish I could be there to watch her compete, but Chris will be there, so that makes me feel better. I'll keep you posted!