BOXES 193-194: Hawai'i 2: Big Island and O'ahu.

You are looking at Banyan Drive, a curving street near Hilo Bay, Hawai'i. These particular banyan trees were planted by celebrities from the 1930s onward: you can find plaques naming FDR, Amelia Earhart, Cecil B. DeMille and Louis Armstrong, among others. Anne and I with Becky and Michelle stayed at Uncle Billy's, a modest hotel along the Drive, during our second visit to Hawai'i in 1994.

We had landed some days earlier in Kailua-Kona on the other (western) side of the Big Island and stayed at the Kona branch of Uncle Billy's. While there we visited the ultra-grand Wyatt Regency Waikaloa on the Kohala Coast (second time for Anne and me--see BOXES 187-188 for our previous trip), this time so that Michelle could "swim with the dolphins" in a pool on the grounds of the resort.

We also had lunch there and enjoyed the elaborate grounds and pools:

From there we drove farther north and east into the Big Island's "cattle country." Mauna Kea is hidden by the clouds in the next picture, and the one after that was taken near the upland town of Waimea:

Anne and I had been to Waimea on our first trip, and were now excited to continue up through North Kohala to the northernmost point of the Big Island, where the road ends at the edge of the Pololu Valley:

We saw a herd of mules--unless they're donkeys--on the seaward side of the road:

Back in Kona we eventually proceeded counterclockwise around the southern part of the island, with a stop at the black sand Punalu'u Beach:

At one point the girls seem to have been tired out by all the driving and beaches:

Kilauea Crater in Volcanoes National Park was our next stop:

And then on to Hilo. The hotel landscaping in the pic on the right looks more upscale than I remember of Uncle Billy's, but probably that's where I took the photo. There's no mistaking the next shot, looking across Hilo Bay toward a hidden Mauna Loa:

Here's the same view with my zoom lens:

The nearby Liliuokalani Gardens are a special highlight of Hilo:

Near the gardens, and interesting in a different way, is Hilo's fish market:

. . . and in another direction the flower market:

Somewhere I took this photo of tropical leaves: overexposed, but I like it anyhow for its unintended semi-abstract pattern:

There are lots of waterfalls reached by hiking trails on the Hamakua Coast north of Hilo. I'm not sure where I took the next photos--Becky on a staircase and both girls on a bridge--or why they were striking that particular pose:

We stopped at Rainbow Falls, inside the city limits of Hilo, or nearly so:

. . . and at the impressively high Akaka Falls, some miles northwest of the town:

It's near another old plantation town, Honomu:

Here is a glimpse of part of the Hamakua Coast:

It was probably back on O'ahu where I took a photo of foliage with a high-rise in the background, and a better one of Anne with tree blossoms:

My final slide from this 1994 trip is a portrait of Becky at Bob and Tripit's apartment, with Elvis in the background:

Our next big travel would be in January 1995, when a super-bargain plane fare made a trip to Belgium and neighboring countries possible--my first European trip since 1989. That will be a subject for the next posts.