My husband can vouch for me, but for the most part, I like to pack my itineraries from sun up until sun down. My sweet husband is a trooper for hanging in there and having such a great attitude about it all. 🙂 I always make sure to include plenty of beach time so we have a chance to relax, but to be honest sometimes we love getting out to explore.
Even with those packed agendas, things don’t always go exactly as planned, and sometimes we simply run out of time. So more often than not, we have places and experiences that get bumped to the next vacation. (Which is completely okay by me, because that means we get to go back sometime, right?) 🙂 So today, I’m starting a new series called: The “Roundup”.
Each Roundup post will include location tips, lessons learned, and things we will change on our next visit. So here goes the first post in our new series, I hope you enjoy!
The Big Island Roundup:
- Lodging: Due to the sheer size of the Big Island, we would make better use of our time if we split up our trip. I’m thinking we should spend half of our nights on the jungle-y, greener, Eastern side in Hilo, and the other half in the fun beach-side town of Kona. This will give us more time to explore each side without spending hours in the car–Let’s try to avoid reliving our late night dance party in the car if we can help it.
- Waipio Valley: I knew we wouldn’t get around to it on our first trip, so unfortunately it wasn’t even added to our agenda. However, next time I would LOVE to take a tour down to the bottom of this Grand Valley. Since we’ll be spending a few days on the Hilo side, maybe we’ll even book a horseback ride down into the valley…
Photo Credit: Top, Bottom Left, Bottom Right
- Volcanoes National Park: I would dedicate a full day or two to this park. There are so many places I would like to hike: Devastation Trail, the Petroglyphs, and Thurston Lava Tube, just to name a few, and another helicopter tour wouldn’t hurt either.
- Anaeho’omalu Bay: (also called A’Bay for short). It was on the itinerary, but after spending so many hours in the car we just couldn’t bring ourselves to drive TWO MORE HOURS round-trip to check out this amazing sunset:
Photo Credit
I know, it would have been beautiful… Next time Big Island, Next time… - Kohala and Hamakua Districts: TIME. The theme this trip was: we simply ran out of time. Unfortunately there was too much to explore and too little time. These two districts were not even added to the agenda on this trip, but you better believe they will be on the itinerary the second time around. 🙂
- Kona Coffee Tour: I can’t believe that we missed checking out the world-famous coffee farms while we were in Kona! We did enjoy our Kona coffee out on the lanai every morning but I wish we would have taken a tour and brought some grindy-goodness home.
What did I miss? What else should I add for our next vacation to the Big Island?
Pictures and Plane Tickets 
You look gorgeous in your pictures here! It’s funny, we’ve driven by Volcano National Park a few times but we’re never gone in (I think we’ve just been pissy about the $10 cover charge) haha. It’s funny (in response to your work comment), I was working remotely as well when I first moved over to HI as a freelancer, but my project ended much faster than I thought it would. It’s pretty tough to find a job where you can work remotely consistently so I think it’s SO great that you have one! I agree that the hardest part about it is the fact that sometimes it can be overpowering if there are no “set” times (ie: you can end up working much longer than normal). 😛
I feel the same about the Kona Coffee Tour. I drank this coffee everyday and can’t believe that we missed the tour 🙂 But there’s always next time, right 🙂
ALWAYS a next time! 🙂