Hilo Day

We spent the week at a condo in the Kona area of Hawaii. Today we were going to drive across the island and see Hilo. When I was doing research there was controversy about driving Saddle Road that goes across the island. People feel it a dangerous road because of the weather. I now am not sure what the big deal is. Not sure if maybe living in Oregon where we drive in the rain more days then not played into it but I didn't think it was that big of a deal. The drive over is about 2 hours. It started to rain the last half of the drive and I was wishing we had just stayed back in Kona. I didn't want to be in Hawaii in the pouring rain. When we got to Hilo we decided to head to the Pana'ewa Rainforest Zoo and Gardens first. Alicia was excited to see a Bengal Tiger. When we got there the rains had just stopped so that was very nice. This was a nice little zoo. Lots of beautiful vegetation, even saw a pink pineapple plant. The Bengal Tiger was asleep when we walked by so that was disappointing.

The boys enjoyed the parrots more then I would have imagined they would have. Kept talking to it. Poor parrot.

Peacocks were also everywhere around the zoo. We watched a couple for awhile. We were imagining it was a female that was being stalked by this male trying to show how beautiful he was. Finally she had enough and walked over to another peacock strutting his stuff. It was really quite hilarious.

After the zoo we wanted to find the Macadamia Factory but never did. Instead we found the farmers Market. We walked through there and bought a few souveniers. We then piled back into the cars and went to Akaka Falls. It was nice to get out and stretch our legs a bit. The vegetation here is just so different then what we have. Trees that have hanging roots, HUGE fern plants, leaves that are the size of bushes. It was a very pretty hike. The water fall was pretty but again we are spoiled here in the Willamette Northwest with our own beautiful falls. These darn kids never want to take pictures and look like goof balls half the time!!

It was now dinner time so we headed into Waimea. We tired to go to a couple of different restaurants but they didn't work out so we took them to our new faorite place in Hawaii- Solimene's. The older three kids were not in the mood for pizza. They went next door for Subway while the rest of us headed in and had some yummy pizza and more marinara sauce! We then headed back to our side of the island for more homework, laundry and bed.