the East side - Hilo and Volcano National Park

 We are staying in Hilo one more night.  Tomorrow we travel to Kauai.  Here is a wrap up of our time in Hilo.

Yesterday we did a couple of short hikes to see waterfalls and then went to a Botanical Garden.

Rainbow Falls


Akaka Falls State Park (440 ft tall)

Botanical Gardens
I could just get my two hands around this bamboo.

Beehive Ginger
Cat's Whiskers
Hanging Lobster Claw
Bat Plant
The orchids were growing everywhere - here they have a small "shelf" on a large tree.  This was seen over and over throughout the Gardens.
Onomea Waterfall
Oncidium fuscatum is an orchid from Peru
Heliconia Plant
a species of ginger
red ginger
medinilla speciosa
Rattle Snake Plant
matchstick bromelia (they look like toy jacks)


Sheri for size - this is a fern....
this one looked like the dark was painted on...
the Gardens went all the way to the coast - about 1 mile round trip






Ohua Lehua

This was such a fabulous Botanical Garden!  We were in there more than 2 hours - everywhere we looked there was another wonder to behold!

Today (Tuesday) we went back to the National Park.  I tell you, the NP system in the US is just fabulous - if you ever get the chance to go to any of the parks - do it!

This is the Kilauea Iki Trail.  It starts in the forest, descending to the crater.  The trail goes across the length of the crater before ascending back into the forest along the rim of the crater.


you can see cracks where the lava cooled - Carsten found his way into one of the larger ones:

After the hike we needed a place to have lunch so we went down a one-lane road to the Hilina Pali Overlook - we could see all the way to the Pacific.  It was so quiet there - 

Back to the main area for another hike.  We saw the Steam Vents:

... and the Sulphur Banks

As usual with the National Parks we took in a lot of information!

Tomorrow (Wednesday) we head to Kauai for a week!  We have some fun things planned so stay tuned!

Aloha - Sheri & Carsten


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