Using up the points. People asked Dave and me why we went to Hawaii this October, rather than some more exotic place. One answer is that we are awash in time share points, which won't take us to Africa or the Arctic. The other is that we do love Hawaii. On October 19, we arrived in Kona, on the Big Island, as a warm tropical breeze blew through the open air airport. Our condo at the Hilton Resort on Waikoloa was spacious and elegant, and on the morning of October 20, 2025, we drove over the "Saddle" of the island to visit Volcanoes National Park.
Time share reservations are always a grab bag experience, but this time we grabbed the right bag!
National parks across the U.S were sparsely staffed because of the government shutdown. That was OK. Healeakala Volcano was spouting smoke, and we visited viewpoints around the huge caldera to watch the smoke billow and the hillsides seethe with steam. A (lone) ranger told us that he and his wife had seen red fire spouting from the volcano the night before.
In some areas the haze was so thick we could barely see the caldera.
Dave stood next to a huge boulder that had been heaved from the nearby caldera during a prior eruption.
Steam seethed from the hillsides along the edge of the caldera.
It was heart-warming to watch new life emerge from the black lava flows. Eventually, the lava will disintegrate into fertile soil.
Trails led for miles along the volcano's craters.
We paused, at Volcano House on the crater rim, to buy Dave an Aloha shirt, covered with images of fiery volcanoes. I assured him it would be perfect for our family luaus.
So many of Hawaii's souvenirs are mass produced and tacky, that it was a special treat to wander through an art gallery, on the rim of Haleakala, that sold beautiful Hawaiian art and crafts.
We then drove the 17-mile road from the crater rim to the sea, through newer lava flows, where plants had not yet poked through. It was a moonscape.
We finally reached our goal--a beautiful sea arch.
We walked along a jungle trail to the Thurston Lava Tube, a tunnel created when lava cooled around the outside of the tunnel while lava inside the tunnel oozed out. It was satisfyingly spooky for this Halloween season.
Macadamia nuts are one of my favorite snacks, and I add them in great handfuls to my homemade granola. Macadamia nuts are also one of the main crops on the Big Island. We stopped at the Mauna Loa factory, outside Hilo, to see how the nuts are processed and to check out the dozens of ways macadamia nuts are flavored and sold. And, of course, to try some samples.
The factory was shut down when we visited. We assumed it was because it was a Sunday, but a visitor whispered to us, in the gift shop, that the equipment was shut down because a visiting little boy had tossed his gum into a huge vat of macadamia nuts. I doubt that, but....
Dave and I constantly searched, during our ten days in Hawaii, for vestiges of the Hawaii of yesteryear, when there were less tourists and more sugar and pineapple plantations, more hula dancing by family members and less at resort luaus, more spam dinners sold from food trucks and less gourmet "Asian fusion" restaurants.
We paused in Hilo for fish tacos at Jackie Rey's Ohana Grill. I suppose that was a Mexican/Hawaiian fusion dish, but the fresh Hawaiian fish dressed in spicy sauce was delicious.
Hilo is one of our favorite Hawaiian places. Its main streets, like this one, have low-rise shops and are still sleepy and tropical. They seem not to have changed since the 1940s or 1950s.
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