To celebrate my brother and I’s 30th birthday this year, my parents decided to take a family trip to Hawaii! We decided to visit the Big Island and the next couple posts will describe our adventures all over the island!

Our first day of vacation consisted mainly of traveling from St. Louis, Missouri to Kona, Hawaii.

^Sunrise as we were flying out of St. Louis^

We were originally supposed to fly from St. Louis into San Fransisco, but our tickets were upgraded and we flew into Denver instead. There was snow in Denver!

^ Snow as we were landing in Denver ^

After a long 7 hour flight, we finally landed in Hawaii! I loved all of the colors of the landscape that you could see as we were coming into land.

So since we didn’t do much on our first day, here is a little bit more about where we stayed. We chose to stay in Kona as Kona is on the western side of the island which is the dry and sunny side of the island. We stayed in a condo I found on VRBO and we really loved it. It had just enough room for a family of four and the location was fantastic.

Right across the street is Kahaluu Beach Park. This park is known for fantastic snorkeling. While we didn’t really have a chance to snorkel here, my brother and I did see several sea turtles relaxing on the rocks.

We really enjoyed walking around on the lava rocks when the tide was low, but always wear shoes since there are a lot of sea urchins enjoying the rocks too.

We loved watching the sunset over the ocean too.

The condo was a great central location to all of the road trips that we wanted to take on the island. Stay tuned for more of our Hawaii travels!