MJK Thrills N Spills

The day after Mike and I were married we flew to the Big Island of Hawaii for our honeymoon. For seven days!! We split up our stay on the island between two different places: a condo in Kona for the first few days and then a house a little south of Hilo for the last few days. We loved it! It gave us some variety of stuff to do. Here's a quick log of what we did while in Hawaii -

Monday, April 13: Since we had a kitchen in the condo we went grocery shopping which we're pretty sure helped to save us a lot of money since we didn't have to go out to eat for every meal. We went snorkeling at Kealakekua Bay after an unsuccessful attempt to go kayaking in the same bay. The guy that we were going to rent kayaks from, Alex, had the police confiscating his kayaks when we showed up because it was against the law for Alex to sell permits on site for buyers to kayak. So we ditched that idea. Thankfully, we hadn't officially rented from him yet! Then we visited and walked around historic park that has a really long name: Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park. Mike really wanted to find a local, fresh fruit stand so we could enjoy all the different fruits and fresh so we found one and bought some interesting fruits (the only one that I remember was star apple and I remember it because it had little worms in it when we ate it the next morning!) While we were in that area of the island and had some time we also visited the painted church that had some pretty interesting paintings that were painted on the actual walls of the church. One adventure we also had going on simultaneously was that the shower in our condo was leaking and so that meant Holly, the landlord, was around on occasion.

The rocky beach outside our condo where we saw a turtle!

Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park

The painted church

Tuesday, April 14: We went to Manini'owali Beach, a pretty white beach, where we swam a little and did quite a bit of boogie boarding. Then we drove back down towards Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historic Park to an area call Two Step to go snorkeling (while we were there the day before we noticed a ton of people snorkeling there so we thought we'd give it a try). And boy are we glad we went there! There was so much to see while snorkeling. In fact, at some point a bunch of dolphins came into the area and swam around us and were jumping out of the water and spinning. It was so dang cool to watch them!! Mike also used his wedding gift, a GoPro, for the first time this day while we were snorkeling at Two Step. That evening we went to a Luau where both of us were pulled up on stage to dance with the dancers. We got a kick out of that and filmed each other.

Luau!

Wednesday, April 15: We slept in this morning, and then drove to Waipio Valley and hiked down to the valley itself. It was kind of funny hiking down on a paved road, but the road is so stinking steep, something like a 25% grade, that they don't let anything for 4WD vehicles down it. So we hiked down and hung out on a black sand beach, teased some crabs on the beach, and then hiked out. This must have been our valley day because we then drove to Pololu Valley and hiked down to beach. That was more of a real hike since it was an actual dirt trail rather than a road. We ended the day by eating at a local cafe, Minnie's, in Hawi before driving back to our condo.

Looking down on Waipio Valley

The remains of a 2WD truck that attempted to come down the road.

Hiking back up the road from the valley

Looking down on Pololu Valley

Thursday, April 16: Mike's Birthday! How lucky was he to celebrate his 40th in Hawaii? So lucky. Maybe we can do the same for mine. :) This was the day that we changed where we were staying, and we drove over the saddle road to Hilo. Along the way we saw a sign for some caves so we stopped and explored the Kaumana Caves. We ate our sandwich lunch at Hololi'i Beach and watched the locals surfing there. Then we drove a little further north of Hilo to Akaka Falls where we hiked around the little paved trail, took some pictures, sweated in the humid heat, and enjoyed the waterfall spray. And if we couldn't get enough of waterfalls, we went to Rainbow Falls, Boiling Pots, and Waimu falls. Then we picked up some more groceries at an actual, normal sized grocery store called KTA. We drove the rest of the way to the house, which ended up being quite the adventure because a portion of the road into the house was lava rock! And then the drive way into the house was a pretty steep grade and then all of a sudden it dipped down and we parked under the house that was on some pretty big stilts. We wonder if the drive way was that way to keep the high tide off the property. That we night we ate in and had lasagna.

Akaka Falls

Rainbow Falls

Our house, the crazy road, and the crazy drive way

view from inside our house

Friday, April 17: The coolest thing about the house we stayed at was that it was right outside the Kapoho Tide Pools that were amazing for snorkeling and exploring! So that morning we snorkeled in the tide pools. I got fried for lack of reapplying sunscreen because we were having such a great time for such a long time in the tide pools. Then we went to Lava Tree State Park and checked out all the old lava trees. We also drove to various beaches and parks on the scenic highways around our neck of the woods, including what they call the "new black beach" which was developed in 1990 when the volcano sent some lava down there, destroying part of the village on its way, and then created some new land and beach land. Then we finished out the day with a really good dinner in Pahao.

Lava Tree State Park - I loved these big leaves

A lava tree

New black sand beach

. . . where they've planted palm trees

Saturday, April 18: This is the day we decided to check out Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but along the way we stopped by a farmers market and a street vendor selling malasadas, which were basically really good donuts. We hiked a 4 mile hike to Kealeua Iki, and to see what ended up being some lame petroglyphs, and then a pretty cool sea arch. We decided to stick around long enough to see the Kealeua Crater glow at night.

Looking over to the Kealeua Crater from our Kealeua Iki hike

Beginning our hike across the Kealeua Iki lava lake

Hiking around the petroglyphs

The sea arch

The glow of the red hot lava on the steam in the Kealeua Crater

Sunday, April 19: For our final day before we flew out that night, we checked out a fancy Japanese looking public park and Coconut Island, which were quickly trumped by the amazing Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden and Onomea Bay. That garden was so cool. Even Mike really enjoyed it. I was amazed the most by all the orchids growing everywhere!! We also stopped by a little smoothie shop along the highway called, What's Shakin, for fresh smoothies that were quite yummy, and then we drove back to Kona to catch our flight with one more stop by another beach where we just sat and watched all the tourists swim and boogie board. Then we caught our flight home - which ended up being an adventure of its own since it was delayed for quite a while.

At the Japanese looking public park

The orchid garden at the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden

Yes. I got married!!!! That's why I've been missing in action from my blog since February of this year. Had to plan the wedding, put my condo up for sale, get married, go on our honeymoon, partially move into his house, change my name, yada yada yada. Mike and I got married on Saturday, April 11, 2015 at the Mount Timpanogos LDS Temple in American Fork, Utah. We had a "small and simple" wedding day, but it was still such a whirlwind! I got to workout that morning at my gym, shower, get my hair done, and then Mike picked me up at noon or so for our two o'clock in the afternoon sealing/marriage time. All of Mike's family was there. A lot of my family was there. And we had a lot of our friends there at the temple too. Then we invited all of our temple guests to dinner at Magleby's in Springville. And that was our wedding day! We really enjoyed it even if both of us felt like it flew by too fast and we didn't really have a chance to soak it in. The very next day, Mike and I flew to the Big Island of Hawaii for our Honeymoon, but that will come in a different post. Here are some of my favorite pictures from that day.