Hawaii’s Big Island: A Relaxing, Rocky Roadtrip

We visited Hawaii’s Big Island and Maui as a family during spring break this year. I travel a lot, but haven’t shared many travel experiences with this audience in the past. After my New Zealand posts, I’ve gotten some requests to, so here it goes. Hopefully it will inspire some of you to book a trip soon!

Our Itinerary

I could have used an extra day on Hawaii’s Big Island because two of our three full days were spent driving to the other sides of the island (and the island really is quite large)!

Tues, March 19: Arrived at the Kona Airport around 3pm

We stayed in a VRBO South of Kona and rented a car through Turo (which I highly recommend). Let me just say that the Kona airport is rivaling my home airport (MSN) for best airport ever because….it has no walls!

Wed, March 20: Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park

Thurs, March 21: Manini’owali Beach (Kua Bay) & Chill Day

Fri, March 22: Hamakua Coast & Manta Rays Night Snorkeling

Sat, March 23: Pool time & flight to Maui

This was the sunset our first night on the Big Island. We weren’t viewing this from some remote cliff or awesome overlook. This was simply the view from the parking lot of our nearest grocery store.

Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park

The one thing I wanted to make sure we didn’t miss was Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. It is two hours away from the Kona area and some of the most popular spots (i.e. Thurston Lava Tube) get crowded quickly, so we left early. I had little hope that I would be able to talk our four teens/pre-teens into doing a hike while I was there, but I was happily wrong about that! We ended up walking through a dormant volcano crater along the popular Kīlauea Iki Trail. This trail is 4 miles long if you leave from the Thurston Lava Tube overflow parking and head through the Thurston Lava Tube as part of your hike (which you should!).

This hike was incredible, one of the best things we did the whole vacation. You’re supposed to do it counter clockwise, but I forgot to do that and we did it “backwards” which was fine except for the incredibly steep staircase at the end. This direction, you walk about a half mile to visit the Thurston Lava Tube before descending around 500 feet through a lush forest with signs like these:

At the bottom, you are in the crater of a volcano and you walk across a cooled lava flow from 1959 complete with cracks, flow lines, and unique plants that are struggling to survive in this Mars-like landscape.

And yes, what goes down, must come up so the final section of the trail if you’re going clockwise is a very steep staircase straight up to the rim of the volcano. The kids were pretty done after that, but everyone was happy to have done the hike.

We visited the Visitor Center and rim of Kīlaueau, a volcano that just last fall was erupting as it often does. We did not have the chance to drive down to the sea, but you could truly spend all day in this park and then some if you did that.

Between Kona & Hawai’i Volcanoes

On our way home, we passed the Punalu’u Bakeshop, the Southernmost bakery in the United States and couldn’t help but stop and get some delicious Hawaiian sweetrolls, including one that was purple, made out of the local Taro Root.

We also stopped at the Punalu’u Black Sand Beach and got our first glimpses of sea turtles being tossed about in the waves!

Manini’owali Beach (Kua Bay)

We found a very beautiful beach 30 minutes North of our condo that was a mixture of both white sand and black lava rocks. Most beaches on Hawaii’s Big Island are just black rocks, which is hard on bare feet to say the least. Manini’owali Beach had very little sand, so families were perched up on the rocks while kids boogie boarded in the huge waves.

This was the first place we saw whales. Humpback whales come to the Hawaiian Islands to mate from November through March and they were everywhere! It was hard not to see whales every time we looked out at the ocean whether we were on our deck or at the beach. More on that to come next week.

Manta Rays

I’m a scuba diver, but the kids are not (yet!) so we didn’t get any dives in this trip. However, one of the coolest things I’ve ever done is available to snorkelers on the Big Island. You can snorkel with giant Manta Rays! We took a tour with Hang Loose Boat Tours, who really brought it. Theo loved the unlimited snacks, and I loved the fact that we spent 45-60 minutes in the water with DOZENS of manta rays literally swimming inches from your face. Tour operators attract plankton to snorkelers with lights, which in turn attracts the mantas. They get natural food, we get a show. Win, win.

Hamakua Coast

Our last day on the island, we took another road trip to Hilo and then up the Hamakua Coast. There are a ton of things to see along the way. We chose the following.

Hilo’s Farmer’s Market is not pictured. It was filled with tropical fruits, but definitely is in no way better than Madison’s awesome farmer’s market. Personally, I wouldn’t call Hilo’s Farmer’s Market worth the visit.

But the Hawai’i Tropical Botanical Garden, in my opinion, was a must-see. It is a curated garden filled with tropical plants from around the world and the whole thing is stunningly gorgeous. These photos can in no way do it justice.

Next stop was a small, hole-in-the-wall place called Pi’ilani’s that’s on the road to the Tropical Garden. It had delicious nachos, tacos, sandwiches, shaved ice, and lots of outdoor seating. It was unexpectedly one of the best meals we had this trip and I’m sad that I was too hungry apparently to take a photo. Mmmm, mmm!

Then, we headed down the road to the Honomu Goat Dairy for some “goat therapy”. What’s goat therapy, you ask? It’s this:

And finally, as the day was running out, we made it to ‘Akaka Falls State Park where you can see not one, but two large waterfalls and a giant banyan tree. We probably could have skipped this .4 mile hike as everyone agreed the waterfalls were not better than Rainbow Falls, but how were we to know that without a visit?

Aloha Hawaii’s Big Island

At this point, it was time to leave Hawaii’s Big Island. We celebrated with some shaved ice and another beautiful sunset. Time to go to Maui, which I will cover next week!