Hawaii - Day 10

Happy Easter!

We started the day by heading out to Rainbow Falls, which is just a couple of blocks north of the house we are staying in.  It was a very impressive waterfall, though as I type this, I must admit it was dwarfed by waterfalls we saw later in the day.  Unfortunately, it was not sunny, so there were no rainbows to be seen.

After that, we drove a short way away to attend church for Easter Sunday.  The church was extremely friendly and welcoming and after the service was over they had an Easter egg hunt for the kids.  They hid eggs in a yard and up into an attached building.  Once the kids had found all of those eggs, they kept coming out with boxes full of plastic eggs and dumping them on the floor for the kids to scramble and pick up.  Our three oldest ended up with 113 plastic eggs filled with money and candy.  Makes most other egg hunts pale in comparison!

We returned to our house for lunch before heading out to explore the area north of Hilo.  The rental car agency had given us free tickets to a botanical garden, which was our first stop.  It was an OK walk - not great, but you couldn't beat the price.  The highlight for the kids was a hedge maze, where the three oldest quickly ran off and got lost.  Sandra and I managed to track down Jonathan, while Alexander found his way out of the maze.  Evan kept running past me, even when I had figured out enough of the maze to know he was heading the wrong way.  He eventually tired and I went and lead him out of the maze.

Our next stop was that Akaka Falls.  The area north of Hilo contains some very impressive valleys and the Akaka Falls are in one of these valleys.  You take a short walk on a path to a very large waterfall that is also very far away, before continuing on to the main attraction - a very nice view of a 450 foot waterfall.  We stopped for pictures and a rest (since we had been carrying Bradley).

We returned to our cars and then headed out to try and find a beach where we could do an Easter egg hunt on the beach like we had promised the kids before we left.  After many missed turns and wanderings down steep and narrow roads, we gave up and returned to the house.  It turns out there aren't any actual sand beaches on this side of the island - everything is just rocks and there are limited swimming areas.  As we are heading to Kona tomorrow, which is on the other side of the island, we decided to do the Easter egg hunt there.

We ate supper at the house, gave the kids baths and then settled down for the night.  The house has an enclosed deck, where you can sit and listen to the frogs and the waterfall and the older two boys are going to sleep outside tonight.  We'll see if they last the entire night.