Fern Grotto

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

We got on the Fern Grotto boat tour around 930am. It went up the Wailua River. This is the only commercially navigable river in Hawaii. A lot of people kyak up river to see the Wailua Falls. It takes about an hour to kyak there and twice as long to get back.  Currently, the falls don't have much water.  We chose the boat ride to the Grotto. It was nice. 

We took a short hike through the forest to get to the grotto.

The fern grows upside down. Before the 1992 hurricane, some of the fern were up to 42 feet long. 

There used to be lots of weddings performed here. They still do some weddings, but not as much as before the hurricane. 

These kids were on the tour boat and held their own show! 

This is the field that Harrison Ford ran through and jumped into the river in the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie.

And now it's time to say aloha to Hawaii.  We are at the airport waiting fir the long night flight home.

Bee Hive Tour

Monday,  September 22, 2025

We went back to Lydgate Farms for a honey bee tour. It was very interesting and tasty! 

The keeper took out one of the frames from the top box for us to see and to taste.

We tasted this honey with the honeycomb.  The honeycomb is wax and was like gum. I chose not to swallow it. The honey was light in color and very good. We tasted other honey also. It was interesting how they are very different.  The store bought honey was definitely not as good. We got to bring a 2 ounce jar of honey home with us, which will be allowed in a carry on bag. 

The bees can go as far as 8 miles away,  but probably don't because of the abundance of flowers on the farm. 

The banana tree has a flower that produces bananas when it is pollinated. For this type of tree, only the first few flowers are pollinated. The empty rings are where the flower did not produce bananas so it tried again. 

Before the bee hive tour, we saw Opaekaa Falls.

After the bee tour, we drove to the northeast side of the island to Princeville. We stopped at Queen's Bath along the way. It was amazing. 

The hike to Queen's Bath was a bit treacherous. 

We drove on to the Kilauea Lighthouse.  It is closed for renovation but it was pretty to see.

We stopped at the Lava Lava Beach Club for early dinner before returning to the hotel. I got Hawaiian Pizza (Hawaiian bbq pork and pineapple) and Key Lime Pie. 

Bike Ride in Hawaii

Sunday,  September 21, 2025

We rented some cruiser bikes from a bike shop so we could ride on the Hall of Fame trail, Ke Ala Hele Makalae. It was about 8 continuous miles one way.  There are other sections but the busy highway with very little shoulder gets in the way.  So we only rode the easy and beautiful 8 mile section (16 round trip). 

There were some big waves! 

When this was a train track,  they used to dump the pineapple waste into the ocean.

On the way back to the bike shop, we stopped for some fresh coconut. 

The water was good, the meat didn't have much flavor and it was a bit rubbery.

Back at the hotel, we saw another seal getting some sun. 

And some trash.

We drove to Shipwreck Beach and walked to and on the Lithified Cliffs. The cliffs were very cool! The waves were big and loud.

We watched a guy fishing from the edge of a cliff. It was a long way down! 

We drove to the Spouting Horn. Water shoots up through some holes in the rocks. There was a hole that very little water went through; this was the one that made the most noise, like a horn. This was also very cool! 

There was a sea turtle swimming around in that rough water. 

I didn't have my bike garmin so I used Strava and forgot to push go, so add 5 miles to the total... lol.