Hawaii 2012 - Day 5

On Day 5 of our Hawaii trip, we left Volcano National Park and headed back toward Kona where we would then hop over on Hawaiian Airlines to Maui for the rest of our trip.  *Note: we rented minivans during our trip and for the longest time Matt was trying to convinence me that I needed to get one when we got back home.  It was nice at times but I am not ready to be a mini-van mom now, and probably not ever.  Just for the record. :-)  

 

  

One of the things that Matt and I missed out on during our 5th anniversary trip was getting to see a black sand beach.  This was the one stop we had to make driving back and it was very much worth it.  We had the beach practically to ourselves and it was so cool.  The texture of the sand was very different, almost like the pebble beaches in Greece because it's made out of crushed up lava rock.  For some reason, the sea turtles (aka Honu) love to hang out here and we got to see a few swimming in the ocean that morning. 

This summarized our experiences of the beach - I was the only one actually smiling at the camera, Natalie was busy looking down or opposite the camera and Rachel was just crying because she was usually afraid of the ocean and sand.

I love this picture of Natalie - she was having so much fun walking on the sand and throwing it around.  i took about 20 picture of her just having a blast.

Have I said how WONDERFUL it was to have Aunt Lisa on our trip?  She is the bestest friend ever!

Our flight to Maui was short and sweet and we got to see both Maui, Lanai and Molokai.  We picked up our minivan which at this point in our trip, we had gotten very effecient loading and unloading into the minivan. We loaded up 2 car seats, 3 carryons, 2 large bags, 1 diaper bag and 5 people within 5 minutes tops.  I have to say we were pretty proud of ourselves because the car attendant's mouth just dropped and all he could say was "wow!".    Once we got ourselves loaded up, we headed down past Kaanapali towards Kahana Sunset condos.  I had searched and searched and then searched some more for a place to stay on the beach and this was a winner!