January 2003 - Laurie and I spent the first night and day of our trip in Honolulu where we visited the USS Arizona Memorial. We got there early in order to avoid the crowds, which we managed to do for the most part. There is a quick little film on the land before heading out to the memorial on a tourist boat. They leave you at the memorial for about 20 minutes to look around. It is a platform that hovers above the sunken USS Arizona. These pictures show some of the things that can be seen from the memorial as well as the visitor center back on land.

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January 2003 - Most of the time that we spent in Hawaii was in and around Kona. We stayed in a little B&B just south of Kona which happened to be a B&D (the D being for dive). Mara's Bed and Dive comes highly recommended and is very reasonably priced too. Among the things we did in and around Kona were scuba diving (both day and night), snorkeling, whale watching and ocean kayaking.

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January 2003 - Honaunau National Park is located along the west coast of the big island very near where we stayed. It had recently been damaged by inclement weather which caused parts of it to be closed. Even with this it offered much to see, like the naturally made lava tube. We also ventured down to the southern most point of the island where there were people fishing and the windmills sat still. This is supposed to be a tremendously windy part of the island be we didn't experience any of that.

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January 2003 - We decided to take a little off-road jeeping trip around and up to the top of Mauna Kea. We picked up the Jeep at the Kona Airport and headed up to Waimea where we found Mana Road which is a 4WD only road. Much of this road is pretty tame with the exception of the animals that you have manuver around and a short 1-2 mile section in the middle which requires the use of the 4WD. Once we made it around Mauna Kea the conditions were too treacherous and the park rangers wouldn't let us to go the top. Once we were done there we went over to Waipio and drove down through the valley. Fortunately it rained pretty hard on us heading back from Waipio to the airport to return the Jeep, which cleaned off all of the mud.

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January 2003 - Hawaii's Volcanoe's National Park is the home of Kilauea which had had flowing lava for 20 years to the month when we were there. It was recommended to us to head out to the lava flowing area just before dark for a better view. This proved to be very beneficial and provided an incredible site in many ways. It was a little tricky walking back to the car across the jagged lava rock in the dark, but it was well worth the trip.

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January 2003 - The city of Hilo didn't have a whole lot to offer, but the surrounding areas did have some mildly entertaining sites. We visited the Lava Tree Park and several of the close by water falls and drove along the northern coast.

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