The Big Island: Day 3, Part II

On the way back from Volcanoes National Park, we stopped at the Pana’ewa Rainforest Zoo.  The zoo is fairly small, but has beautiful vegetation, some interesting animals, and admission is free!  I would recommend this stop for families traveling to or from the Volcanoes National Park. 

The main attraction is a white tiger, who was taking an afternoon nap when we came by to see him. 

The kids enjoyed sitting on this white tiger bench, however.

We made a donation on the way out.  D also “donated” by buying himself a Mountain Dew at the gift store because he was getting tired of driving and it was hot.

n was afraid to have his picture taken by this mural of the white tiger.  As in, he was almost going to cry—silly boy.  Notice that he is keeping his distance from the wall.

Our next stop was Two Ladies Kitchen, in Hilo, for some delicious mochi.

I picked up an assortment pack of chi chi mochi.  The smaller ones contained bits of chocolate candy/oreos.  They were tasty, and I’ve never seen that before.

Stawberry mochi with azuki beans.  This was a “one piece” order.  When asked why there were two pieces, the woman at the counter said they included two because the strawberries were smaller.  I can’t imagine what a regular size strawberry mochi would look like!

Yum!

We also made a stop at Big Island Candies.  The store is pretty fancy, and they offer free shortbread samples and Kona coffee.  The kids were disappointed since most of their shortbread has nuts, but we did buy them a piece of chocolate.

They are known for their diagonally dipped chocolate shortbread.

Upon closer inspection, this person was making chocolate dipped dried squid—ew!

On our way home, we took the newly-christened Daniel K. Inouye Road, which saved us about 45 minutes on our trip back to Waikaloa.

The weather was erratic, but we made it back. 

We had dinner reservations at Roy’s, which ended up being my favorite meal of our trip. 

Da Kine Combo, with short ribs and shrimp.

Misoyaki butterfish with a Dragon Roll.  So rich, but so good!

Kids’ chicken teriyaki, which was preceded by a cheese quesadilla, carrot sticks and apple slices.

The kids’ meal also includes an ice cream sandwich.

AND, because it was k’s birthday, the waiter also brought a dessert called Chocolate Decadence:

This was basically chocolate ganache, and really rich, so we didn’t eat too much of it.  Plus, we knew that a cake from Grandpa and Grandma was waiting for us back in the condo.

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Guava chiffon from Foodland—nice and light!

Phew-what a day.  Can you see why it took two posts to document?  I think it will be a while before k can top off this birthday! 

The Big Island: Day 3, Part I

This was an action-packed day for us, so I think it is best to split this post into two parts.  Since the waves were still big, it was actually good that we had planned to go to Volcanoes National Park on Saturday, k’s birthday.  The trip from Waikaloa to the volcanoes took us about 2.5 of driving time, so we left just after 6:30 a.m.  Understandably, D’s parents decided to sit out this side trip, since they had already been multiple times. 

First stop: Tex Drive In in Honokaa, about 45 minutes from Waikaloa.  D and I were looking forward to this stop since we remembered our previous trips to this institution of fried dough.  When we were watching them cut out the dough for the malasadas, the kids were concerned that the pieces looked small.

They were pleasantly surprised when they saw the box of warm, fluffy malasadas stuffed with filling.  From L –> R: Apple, Raspberry, Bavarian Cream, Chocolate.  (FYI, we didn’t quite finish all of them, but we were quite close!)

Next stop was to pick up bento boxes for lunch in Hilo, since the park doesn’t have that much in the way of food.  We went to Hiro’s Place, a hole-in-the wall joint in a KTA shopping center. 

Needless to say, the kids LOVED the spam musubi (which also had a thin layer of scrambled egg) and the chicken karaage and the chicken katsu.  Oh yes, and the onigiri.  So cheap, too!

Once inside the Visitors Center of the park, we watched the movie first thing.  I think this was the first time that n didn’t fall asleep during the movie!  Watching hot lava gurgle and spray is pretty exciting stuff, I guess.  I was also excited to add another stamp to my national park passport.

Next, the kids completed their junior ranger badge.  Kids six and under have significantly less things to do to earn their badge.  I told k that she was technically still six since she was born at night on that day—haha. 

Next, we hiked the Thurston Lava Tube. 

Everything was so lush and green.

Next, we hiked Devastation Trail (1.0 mi roundtrip). 

The trail led us to this huge crater, and we could see some people hiking the bottom, as well as wisps of steam. 

Our last stop was the steam vents.  By this time, the kids were running out of steam. 

 

This was n’s first time to the Volcanoes National Park, and k’s second (although she was less than one year old the first time that we went).  I am glad they were able to experience it this time around—it is such a surreal place.