Your Ideal Hawaii Island Vacation

Hapuna Beach in South Kohala on Hawaii Island

Seven years ago we came to Hawaii Island to take a year off. We had so much fun that year we never left.  We became full time tourists and explored every part of the island. Since we live on the island, we are often asked for directions and advice on what to see, the best way to get to Volcanoes National Park, the best beaches, where to snorkel, what to see in Kona, and more.  We end up drawing blurry maps on napkins and writing down directions to our favorite sites on the island.

We wrote Your Ideal Hawaii Island Vacation: A Guide for Visiting the Big Island of Hawaii to provide clear directions to all the fantastic sites around the island that are easily accessible by a regular car.

We started by drawing maps and taking photos of each place -  150 of them. We drove to the sites in a regular car to verify our maps and the directions. We redrew the maps many times so they made sense of what it felt like driving the road. We took photos to help identify the sites from the road, not to be artistic. The photos are in black and white to keep the price of the guide below $10.  We leave photographing Hawaii’s brilliant colors and beauty to you.  

The guide includes a great deal of information about areas barely covered in other guides like the incredible sites in the districts of Kau, Puna and Hilo.

For example, the guide tells you how to get to the actual South Point (the most southern point in the US), not the place tour buses and 99% of people visit thinking is South Point.  The actual South point is a quarter mile walk from the parking area and an incredible sight to see.

Your Ideal Hawaii Island Vacation guide tells you how to get to Kahuku Ranch – a huge new addition to Volcanoes National Park with its own entrance in Kau.  It is not open every day and the gate is hard to find. We show where it is and tell when it is open.  Though remote, it is a fantastic place to visit.

The guide tells you about an amazing open air church above Punaluu Black Sand beach with a spectacular view of the beach and surrounding bay.  Though Punaluu’s Black Sand beach is visited by tens of thousands of tourists every year, most do not even know about the little church and incredible views just a short walk from the beach parking lot.  The church is dedicated to a young man who traveled to America in the 1800’s and became the first Hawaiian Christian. The book tells the incredible story of how this young man from Punaluu changed the course of history in Hawaii.

Your Ideal Hawaii Island Vacation guide covers sites along Puna’s coast like a lava heated hot springs and a haunted ocean park (it really gave us the creeps).

The guide includes all the places Hilo is known for but it also has:

the hidden Happiness Garden; the best fish market; the location of a banyan tree planted by Babe Ruth, and where to look into the Wailuku River to see the fabled rock formation called “Maui’s Canoe”.

Your Ideal Hawaii Island Vacation guide has the historical Hawaiian cowboy and ranch sites in Waimea, but it also has directions to a secret Military base where Marines trained during World War II.

Your Ideal Hawaii Island Vacation guide includes the location of the State of Hawaii’s only remaining Chinese Society Building in North Kohala where the secret white lotus society plotted the overthrow of the Chinese government.

When we toured Europe, we loved the guides that described the historical events that took place at the sites we visited. We remember a bus tour to a remote grassy field outside of Rome.  It was a boring view of grass and stones until we read about the Appian Way and how it changed the course of history for the Roman Empire. We wanted to create a travel guide for Hawaii Island like those European travel books that told about the people, the history and events that made Hawaii the place it is today. We researched the island’s history from diaries of early travelers and missionaries.  We read biographies and found old newspapers and books about the island.  The guide has historical information in bold lettering interleaved with photographs and site descriptions.

Including the historical stories and legends in the guide makes it an interesting read for visitors as well as armchair travelers. Researching and visiting the sites on the island gave us a deeper appreciation of the people and events that occurred on the island and makes it feel even bigger and more amazing than before.

If you have a Kindle, the guide book is available in two parts, Your Ideal Hawaii Island Vacation East Side covering Hilo, Puna, Volcanoes National Park, Kau, and the Hamakua Coast and Your Ideal Hawaii Island Vacation West Side covering North Kona, South Kona, South Kohala resort area, North Kohala, and Waimea.  The Kindle versions have many more pictures than the paperback version and they are in color.

Our hope is that Your Ideal Hawaii Island Vacation guides provide you a deeper view and appreciation of Hawaii Island and a more fun Hawaii vacation.