Big Island 2016 - Day 3

Our second day on the Big Island was our last free full day so we started with marking a few small sites off our list. Our first stop was the Hilo Mauna Loa nut factory. We got some great samples and took a tour of how the nuts are processed. It was overall pretty interesting, we even bought some yummy toffee chocolate covered macadamia nuts. Our next stop was the Hilo Farmers Market, in our research people talked about how amazing it was and there would be all this incredible produce. We were slightly disappointed driving by, it was fairly small taking up half a block and we were not on the big island long enough to want to purchase much produce so we didn’t even bother parking and continued on. Our next stop was the Rainbow Falls, which unfortunately was also underwelming. Our expectations may have been a bit too high.

Following our short stops we headed towards the Mountain of Mauna Kea. It was a long drive and not very steep, until we got to the ranger station. Where the terrain was suppose to get more challenging for most cars. We elected to just take some photos and head back down the mountain. The sites were beautiful sitting above the clouds and watching the different colors cover the mountain.

We drove back to our place and rested for a while before it was time to drive out to another location on the volcano to watch the lava. This time we were about 3 miles out, as oppose to the 5 miles out from the previous night. We walked out for a little over an hour and got a much cooler view. We attempted some photos but they did not do it much justice. We then walked back, M periodically looking back at the lava while I would just want to pull up a chair and watch the stars.