Months of fairly quiet eruptive activity at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park have ended in recent days with a series of explosive rock collapses, earthquakes and a rising lava lake at Kilauea Volcano summit’s Halemaumau crater. Halemaumau crater has been producing a steam and ash plume from an ever-expanding vent in its floor since March 2008. […]
Trust us. You haven’t truly sampled everything Hawaii residents love to eat until you’ve had a Spam musubi. It’s the perfectly portable Hawaii snack—a slice of fried Spam over a compacted block of sticky white rice, and all of it wrapped with a ribbon of dried nori (seaweed). There are dozens of versions of this
Imagine dining on a celebrity chef-designed six-course meal, prepared with fresh Big Island procured ingredients, at a luxe resort on the South Kohala Coast. The James Beard Foundation’s cross-country gourmand-appealing road trip Celebrity Chef Tours is making a stop at the Mauna Lani resort this month. It’s the first time the tour has been in
Visitors heading to Akaka Falls State Park on the Big Island’s scenic Hamakua Coast will now have to pay a fee to enter. The Hawaii state Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) recently began charging entry fees for non-residents and commercial tour vehicles entering Akaka Falls State Park. The fee is $5 per car,
An active lava flow from Kilauea volcano is lending real-life drama to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park’s 2nd annual Volcano Awareness Month. The month-long January program is organized each year by the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) to help visitors understand and respect the volcanoes that have created our island paradise. Less expected on the schedule
Everywhere you turn on the Kona Coast, you encounter traces of the past. On this lava-filled leeward coast of Hawaii’s Big Island, Capt. James Cook died, in a skirmish over a rowboat. Only a few miles from where Cook perished, Kamehameha the Great fought his first major battle. After nearly 30 years of struggle to
Visitors to the Big Island of Hawaii eager to see lava from Kilauea volcano as it approaches the Puna coastline will soon get a better, closer look at the flow. The current Kalapana coastline viewing area, maintained by Hawaii County Civil Defense, will be extended over freshly hardened lava flows, according to the Associated Press.
The months between November and May are whale-watching season in Hawaii. Nearly 10,000 humpback whales make the long journey from the waters off southeastern Alaska to mate, give birth and nurse their calves in warm Hawaiian waters, where they are protected. They linger until late April or early May. They best way to see them
There’s no better place to bid aloha to 2010 than in Hawaii, with fireworks over the Pacific Ocean. Imagine balmy weather on New Year’s Eve, lounging in slippers on a stretch of sandy beach, maybe a tropical cocktail in hand. No snow to plow, no heavy coats to wear, no chance of hail in the
One of the Big Island’s most unique public parks, Lava Tree State Monument, recently reopened after three months of maintenance work and park improvements. The Lava Tree State Monument is a public park located in the Puna district of the Big Island known for its “lava trees”—actually tree molds that were formed when a lava
Good news for the Big Island of Hawaii and its east side city by the bay. Continental Airlines will begin offering the first major carrier daily nonstop flights from the U.S. Mainland to Hilo in more than a quarter century, beginning June 2011. Continental announced this week that it would be adding a daily nonstop
Is there anyone who still believes you can’t have a white Christmas in Hawaii? Last week, a storm front that brought heavy rains across the island chain dropped the first snow of the season on the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the Big Island. So much so, in fact, a winter storm
