Mauna Loa Village Kailua-Kona

... Kansas for Christmas!<br>We walked around, searched for a fountain diet coke and sat and enjoyed the view of the water and the ship in the distance. Then we just went into a few of the stores and came back to the ship.<br><br>The volcano was beautiful last night! We sat outside and enjoyed watching it! There was so much red lava flowing that it made thick smoke and we couldn't see the top of the volcano and the flow ...

... treadmills, 3 elliptical and a new age stepper. Plenty of towels and water at least.<br>The next feature we checked was the Super Pool. And it is super big. It has a kids area with fountains, a slide and sand (pea gravel) zero depth area. It flows to a bigger slide, a nifty water fall with mist action. The pool keeps on going.... There is a free form section that includes some nice slope and a 3 inch section ...

... property (it's awesome) and the Kahalu'u beach which has some of the best snorkeling according to a hotel guy Jeff talked to downstairs and according to "The Big Island Revealed" book. (That's a great series; if you're traveling anywhere look for a 'Revealed' book.) We're also planning to explore Keauhou since I didn't get here in 2005. Tonight we may venture into Kona for the evening; we're playing that one by ear. We're about 3 miles south of ...

... hotel. Due to the inclement weather, the luau had been moved inside to one of the hotel's ball rooms. To be honest, this did take away from the ambiance and magic of it, but it was still fairly entertaining. There was a coconut husking demonstration, dancing demostrations from all of the polynesian islands, and a lot of food. Dad bought a beautiful and fragrant fresh flower lei for mom and one for me - both of his girls ...

... intention, or the strong ocean currents around Hawaii will drag them away. Marv says there was a real sense of wonder going down into the (preternatural) blue of the depths (we went down below 100 feet, which makes us part of the less than 0.1% of the world's population that has been that deep). We loved seeing all the blue, yellow, black and white fish and wondered what colours they really are, since the deep water filters out many ...

I can't believe how fast times flies and today was my last full day in Hawaii!! The morning wasn't terribly eventful, as I knew I had the trip to the Summit of Mauna Kea to look forward to. I spent a good hour repacking my bags...I didn't realize how many souvenirs I bought. It will be interesting to see tomorrow morning how I'll be able to cram everything else in! Then I drove 45 minutes down south to visit ...

Aloha! We have just spent a magical week on the Big Island of Hawaii. Having never been here before we had the greatest time! This is the first of many blog entries to come and in reality is only a book-end to a six month family journey through heaven (working and playing)! We found out that due to the intense and tedious ground preparation of hundreds of acres of lava-filled landscape ...

... of our attempted hike. It was so windy you could barely breathe up there and as we walked around for a few seconds we realized that from where we were we could hike over to the "actual" summit which was only a few hundred feet away. I heard Chris yell over the wind "Do you want to hike to the summit" and I screamed "No!". Ad so we got back into the truck and headed down. Being as we had to get 14,000 feet down and then into town on 1/8 tank ...

... gardening work i am doing and have built more beds for my friends land... as well i have planted in some of the beds already there... also making seedlings and cuttings... mostly the land has been focussed on growing a food forest (food trees) and perennials... tho we also have a bit of annuals planted.... bananas, avocados, mulberry, limes, oranges, guavas, strnge ...

It was terribly hard to leave Kauai this morning. It is such a beautiful and peaceful place. We left the hotel at about 8:30 and faced the horrors of airport check in and security. I must admit, though, that the process was considerably less difficult than it was in Honolulu. We had a double elevator ride. Up, level, land from Kauai to Honolulu followed by up, level, land from Honolulu to ...