Eat Swim Hike

This past week was spent at  The Big Island of Hawaii  and what a wonderful week it was.    The weather was warm and tropical and unlike other trips to Maui where we headed straight for the beach and plopped ourselves down for a week and did blissfully nothing,  we decided to see the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park located near Hilo on the other side of the island.  What an incredible experience!  We did the Kilauea Iki hike down through a lush rain forest area, across the lava crater floor,  back into another rain forest area and then through a lava tube, all in the course of five hours!  At times we felt we were on the set of Jurassic Park and then on the surface of another planet.  Here are just some of the many pictures we took:

The active Kilauea volcano, seen best at night:

                                                                           

Hiking through the lava filled crater:

                                                                     

 
Piles of lava called cairns mark the trail through the crater:
                                                                                 

The rain forests were dense and beautiful:

 
                                                                               

Walking through the Thurston Lava Tube:

                                                                             

                                                                 

We took a drive up the coast the next day and saw some beautiful waterfalls:

                                                                           

                                                       

Stopped at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach which is made of lava chips and saw the sea turtles who like to go there and rest:

                                                                           

Stopped for some lunch at What's Shakin' and had an interesting fruit called Rambutan, which we encountered at just about every meal throughout the week.  It's actually a bland kind of fruit - do you think they serve this just for the tourists?

                                                                           

                                                                         

A few more short hikes and then it was on to The Four Seasons in Kailua-Kona for some sun, swimming, golfing and wonderful meals.  Here's the view from our room at sunset one night:

                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                                  
   Another sunset:


                                                                           

                                                                         
And there was even some time for knitting.  I managed to work on one sock for my husband with Opal sock yarn in their Vincent Van Gogh series.  This yarn  is named Gaugin's Chair after one of the Van Gogh paintings:

                                                                             

                                                                     

                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                  
 
Have a great weekend and check out what others are knitting at Tami's blog.