Having covered the northwest, west, and southeast sides of Maui, we checked of our hotel and headed to our next Island, Hawaii – the Big Island. We flew out of Maui and learned quickly that the Hawaiian Airlines Maui airport folks aren’t known for the friendly disposition. Yikes, think of it this way, if the two guys from grumpy old men were looking for jobs, the Hawaiian Airlines Maui airport folks would be their people!

We decided not to let them ruin our mood, so we just smiled and headed to our gate. We took off and landed on time, so I’ll take a little grumpy as a trade off anytime.

We landed on the Big island and immediately saw all the differences… everything seems to have come from volcanic rock!

The Big Island of Hawaii is the youngest island in the Hawaiian chain. This makes perfect sense since the Big Island has the most active volcanos. We were able to check in a bit early so we dropped off our bags and headed to the Big Kahuna Grill for lunch. The food was great and the atmosphere was so relaxing from the open deck.

Everyone was ready for a nap, but we can sleep inside at home, so the boys and I headed down for a little pool time, and Mike joined us a little later.

The Big Island is very different than Maui. We are staying in Kona which is much more densely populated – based on what we have seen. It is definitely a tourist area like our NC Beach towns. (Tomorrow we are exploring more of island and I’m interested to see how it looks.)

The boys went to the gym to complete their soccer runs (because their parents wouldn’t let them go run on the street). Mike found (and hotel staff agreed) a restaurant for us to try that has fresh seafood grill and market, Umekes. It was delicious! Mike and Michael had the Ahi Tuna steak special, Leo went with the seafood pasta, and I had the fish tacos made with Ono fish (which the waitress told me on mainland it’s called Wahoo). Everything was fantastic, especially the lava cake at the end ♥️

Tomorrow we were supposed to snorkel on the Kona (west) side of the island. However after the multi-level motion sickness on Maui, we pivoted and are now headed for a non-curvy road land adventure on the Hilo (east) side the island 😊