Road Trip

Stacey and I decided to take a road trip on Saturday because it was such a nice day. Originally our plans were to head up to Waimea to the farmer's market, and then come home. But we decided to do a little exploring instead. Wouldn't you believe the camera ran out of batteries before we even made it to Waimea?

The first several pictures are during the drive north. Most of them aren't very good because we were taking them while moving, through the windshield, etc.. But they are better than nothing, I guess.

The drive up was spectacular. It rained on us a few times, and it really made the sky pretty. Everything is green when you start to head north on the island. This part of the island gets the most rain. This stretch of coastline, called the Kohala Coast, is some of the prettiest coastline Hawaii has to offer. One of the spots up hear is called Kiholo Bay, and it is one of the spots that we are most anxious to see. It supposedly has good surf periodically as well, but we heard an interesting story recently that makes me wonder if it is worth checking out. One of our friends is currently studying for her helicopter pilot's license. She was flying earlier in the week over Kiholo and spotted a large tiger shark between 12 and 15ft long. They hovered directly over it and got a good look at it. The scary thing was that there were some snorklers nearby that had no idea! Honestly, I think this happens alot and people just don't realize it. Sharks are more afraid of humans than humans really know. It would take a freak event for that shark to bother those people. Nevermind what you see on Good Morning America about those spearfisherman killing that tiger shark. I don't believe they were in harms way, they just killed it for fun. When the media got ahold of it, it became a "life or death situation."

Off to the left you can see the coastline where Kiholo and several other bays are located.

This is the town of Waimea. We drove around a bit and saw the farmer's market, which was great. All Hawaiian grown and local handmade things for sale at a great price. We also checked out the school that Stacey will start at in the fall. It was very small and neat looking. She is very excited about it.

This is the part of the trip where the camera runs out of batteries. We have already began planning another trip to take more pictures. The next few pics I got were with my phone, so the quality isn't great. But it will give you a good idea of what we saw. This pic is from up on the highway leaving town. There are some incredible homes up here with spectacular views. When I say incredible homes, I mean mostly the view and location. Most of the homes would be between the $100k to $350k back in Texas. The greatest part about Waimea is the elevation and weather. In this pic we are at around 3000ft. The temp is in the low 70's, and if you look to the left you see Mauna Kea with it's peak covered in snow. And if you look right you see the pacific ocean. There are rolling green hills with cows on them everywhere. And the Parker Ranch is spectacular, and has alot of great history.

In this pic you can barely make out the snow covered peak and observatory of Mauna Kea. It looks like clouds, but most of the white you see at the peak is snow. With the naked eye you can see it perfectly, as well as the observatory. But this is a phone camera pic and it is tough to see. Pictures cannot do it justice anyway. Nor can words.

So we decide to head up to Hawi (pronounced "Ha-Vee"). Hawi is the northern tip of the Big Island. This area is mostly local Hawaiian and very much resembles what Kona used to look like. We ended up taking an old dirt road back to this point that had a lighthouse on it. When we got there we realized that a large Northeast swell was hitting the island, and the surf was REALLY good. There were several guys out, and the waves were easily overhead. It looked really fun, but I had brought only my board and no trunks to get in with. We moved along the coast a short distance and found some guys being towed into huge waves with jetskis. At this spot the surf was 10 -15ft. These next few pics are some of those waves. Its impossible to tell how big they are with no one to show the scale, but they were some of the biggest waves I have ever seen.

The expression is "overhead" or "double-overhead" which means the top of the wave is over the head of a surfer standing up on his board. Double overhead means there is enough room for two people to stand up stacked one on the other. These waves were easily double overhead.

We travelled along further to this beach that is a long hike down. It was incredible, and there was a freshwater lake down there that River really enjoyed. After spending some time here, we decided it was time to head back. We are already thinking about when we will come back to these spots again.

I think you can click on most of these pictures and get a larger view, but I am not sure. Try it. Also, don't hesitate to leave a comment at the bottom of these posts if you like what you see! Or even if you don't!