Hawaii

First off I want to apologize for not blogging in a while. After mission trip I was home for three days before I left for Hawaii for a week. Since I've been back I've been thinking about how exactly I'm going to tackle writing about everything I've experienced in Hawaii. This trip was honestly incredible and I can't thank my parents enough for this (and all) of the amazing trips they've taken me and my brother on. I vlogged the entire trip, and the video is currently on YouTube so be sure to check it out here. I decided to format this post like I did for mission trip and just talk about what happened day-by-day.

Day #1: TRAVELING. Our trip started in the STL airport, where we arrived in Denver, CO, then flew to LAX, and finally arrived in Kona. 

Day #2: We drove to Mauna Kea beach, voted one of the best beaches in the world. The water, as you can see, was crystal clear. The beach wasn't very crowded because they only allow a small amount of people in at a time which made it even better. My dad, brother, and I saw a sea turtle too which was really cool. 
Credit to my mom for taking an awesome picture
Some coral we saw
Day #3: We went to another beach, Captain Cook. It wasn't really a "beach" per say because the "beach" was all huge chunks of lava rock. However, the water was so blue and the coral was really close to the surface which made the snorkeling even better.



And then after we visited the mountain, my dad and I swam part of the Ironman course. We just followed the markers around the left side, and we swam approximately 1/3 of it before heading back in.



Day #4: My dad went to Kona a few years back with his cousin, Tony. They wanted to bike up a portion of the mountain, Mauna Kea. My dad did four miles then and wanted to continue the bike ride. See this route starts after you reach the visitors center, where you have to stop and get acclimated with the altitude. We rode the Jeep up to where he last stopped, around mile 5, and he wanted to bike the final portion up to the top. He thought it was only 2 more miles, no, it was 4. The altitude was at 12000 feet and I was struggling to breathe just sitting in a car. My dad biked another mile, mile and a half-ish, before we told him it was probably best to just drive up the rest of the way. Once we got to the top it was breath-taking, both figuratively and literally. We took a quick family photo and descended the mountain.The total height of Mauna Kea is 13,000 feet above sea level.
This was my selfie at the visitor's center. Behind me, yes, those are clouds.
Mi madre y yo
My dad biking
This was the view from the top of the mountain. That line you see in the picture is a hiking trail. Why you would hike, I have no idea. 
Our family photo on top of Mauna Kea
We stopped as we went down the mountain and took pictures




And here are some sunset photos.



Day #5: We took an amazing helicopter tour on the other side of the big island, Hilo. Be sure to watch the vlog footage for this day because I got some amazing videos of the volcano and some waterfalls.

As Scott, our pilot, suggested, you have to take a selfie with a waterfall

Hunter and Scott
(make sure to emphasize the last t :D )

Lava Rock
The volcano

Day #6: We took a Body Glove Snorkel Tour. Some of these photos are photos of photos, so I apologize. Others are fine!
Hunter diving under the water
The boat we were on from the ocean

Hunter and I jumping from the high jump at the top of the boat

We saw spinner dolphins, too, so that was really cool

Day #7: Our final day in Kona we visited one more beach, which was well worth it because we had to off-road in the Jeep for 35 minutes to get there. The beach was isolated when we got there, probably because no tourist wanted to risk their rental car to get there. 







After our amazing time at this beach we unfortunately had to head back to our hotel room because we had to be out by 1 pm. However, our flight wasn't leaving until 9 pm so we wandered around Kona some more and went into some coffee shops. Our flight was from Kona to San Francisco, where we arrived at 6 am San Fran time, then we had a 5 hour layover, finally we were able to arrive in St. Louis at 5 pm. So in total it was 16 hours of traveling. Once we were home, yes we were sad, but overall we were just happy to be home.

I hope you all enjoyed this most, I was really excited to share all of my memories with you. Make sure to check out my YouTube video for a more detailed version of what happened on my trip. It would mean the world to me if you could also subscribe to my channel, and if you already do, thank you so much!

Until next time,
Taylor xx




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