November In Hawaii

I was fortunate to be invited to spend a few weeks this November in Hawaii.  It was my first visit to the islands.  My friend lives on the Big Island, otherwise known as Hawaii.  What an interesting place.  The island is cut in half by the volcano's that formed it.  

One half of the island is a tropical rain forest.  It also is where most of the residence of the island live.  The humidity on this side is consistently near 100% almost all the time.  I found it a little difficult to get used to. 

 It also rains almost every day which is really no big deal since it doesn't last long and it is warm, averaging around 80 degrees during the day.

The other side of the island is desert consisting of mainly black lava flows without hardly any moisture.  That side is where most of the big tourist resorts are, and I do mean big.  The Hilton for example wraps around a bay.  It is so large that they have a train to take visitors around.  

On top of  one volcano, Mauna Kea, is where the islands telescopes are.  The top is over 13000', the height of Mt Rainier.  There is roughly a dozen large telescopes up there.  The visitor's center is at 11,000'.  This picture was taken not far from there at sunset.  We were in the sun all day on the "dry" side of the island and figured the view of the ocean at sunset up there would be great.  When we got there, the clouds had formed and obscured the ocean. 

But they made for an interesting picture at sunset.  It was dark by the time we returned to the visitor's center.  They had put out several telescopes from which we were able to see several objects in the evening sky.  It was a highlight for me.

We also spent a day hiking in the Volcano National Park.  This hike goes half way around the rim of of this not quite extinct volcano.

The trail then goes down through the middle of the crater.  I took this picture because the lady was such a contrast to the black and grey of the volcano's crater floor.  A lot of the island, especially the "dry" side, looks like this because of all the lava flows that have formed the island.

The volcano next to the one we hiked is very active.  This picture was taken at dusk from the nearest viewpoint.  It very impressive.

So I just went from sunny weather in the 80's to single digit temperatures in North Idaho.  But I do like experiencing winter since I spent all of my life in the Seattle area where it rarely snows.