Day 7 . Hilo Side

We woke up early for an adventure day. It takes about two hours to drive to the other side of the mountain, and the kids were so excited for it with promises of caves, new icecream, and volcanoes.

 Big Sky.

We head over the mountain

 First stop, Kaumana Caves. Amazing.

 I have some SERIOUSLY brave kids! We gave them both headlamps and a flashlight, and off they scampered into a pitch black cave. Up and over boulders, climbing onto all the surfaces, and squeezing into tight spaces so they could get through a tight spot into a larger cavern. Oh, my goodness. They logged a half a mile into the pitch black cave. Seriously.

 Selfie in a cave! :)

 Everly is obsessed with all the geckos around here. She's managed to catch a couple of the baby ones. :)

 We stopped for lunch in Hilo and explored Liliuokolani, on of the garden parks in Hilo.

 The water on the grounds rises and falls with the tides, so to our delight, the pathways were slightly covered, making for a refreshing stop.

 I love all these Banyan trees.

 Parks does too.

 I'm not sure where the kids saw this, but they have both REALLY wanted to swing from vines in Hawaii, and they both got their chance at the park.

 We stopped at Rainbow Falls for a little more hiking and exploring.

 And a well deserved ice cream pit stop.

 And then we made our way to the mountain. Mauna Kea is a beast of a mountain at 14,000 feet. We drove to 9200 and hiked up a to one of the ridges to watch the sun set before the Observatory broke out the telescopes.

 This last part of the trail was STEEP! Everyone else was in hiking shoes or sneakers, but we only had our flip flops. No worries, no trail is too tough for the Washington hiking kids in flip flops.

After the sunset, we hiked back down and got to see stars and planets through some HUGE  telescopes at the observatory. It was AMAZING! We got to see Saturn so close up, we could see the rings in detail. I'm still in awe.