(Click here for more photographs.)
For the second portion of our trip, we took a short flight from Kona to Lihue on the island of Kauai. Known as the Garden Island, Kauai is the 4th most visited of the Hawaiian Islands, behind Oahu, Maui and Hawaii. However, you could say it “punches above its weight” when it comes to natural beauty and dramatic landscapes.
(Click here for more photographs.)
Following the passing of Umeno Morita, Valerie’s Mom, the family began making plans for a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii, Umeno’s birthplace, to scatter her ashes. That trip began on June 4, 2022, approximately one year after her passing. We flew into Kona, HI, and stayed in Fairway Villas by Outrigger in Waikoloa.
Six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador you’ll find the Galapagos National Park which encompasses 97% of the land mass of the Galapagos Islands and the surrounding waters. This is one of the most bio-diverse places on earth.
(Click here for more photographs.)
After our mini-vacation, we returned to South Lake Tahoe for a few final days. The highlight of this time was a boat tour to Thunderbird Lodge. Steve and Wende’s new neighbor in Tahoe runs these tours in addition to tours to Emerald Bay. Their business is called Cruise Tahoe.
(Click here for more photographs.)
Rollins is on the western shore of Flathead Lake, south of Glacier National Park. We parked at Rollins RV Park.
Flathead Lake is the largest natural fresh water lake west of the Mississippi River. By surface area it is apparently just very slightly larger than Lake Tahoe but I would think that as water levels change, the honor could go to either of these two lakes. Flathead Lake has a much more irregular shoreline than Lake Tahoe giving it lots of inlets and bays. We took a boat tour from the town of Lakeside. We were told that the water is clean enough that many homeowners on the lake pull their water from the lake using only basic filtration.
Next stop: Missoula, MT
Second Act 