When the world shut down in March of 2020, many of us immediately missed our ability to travel – not just for pleasure but for work, too. Digital marketers know the importance on staying on top of the latest trends and technology, and one of the best (and most fun!) ways to stay knowledgeable is through the myriad of conferences each year. While we still can’t meet in person, we can still attend many free virtual marketing conferences in 2021.
Last updated: March 8th, 2021.
We spent a quick few days visiting Yosemite National Park in the winter of 2019. It was one of our more, er, interesting trips. From a very rough ascent from the airport, to hikes in the snow, to us completely missing the Firefalls due to our own incompetence – read on for what to do and what not do to when planning a trip to Yosemite in February!
We had a late evening flight out on our last day in Hawaii, so we spent the afternoon hiking Pololu Valley on the north peninsula of the Big Island, followed by a visit to Lapakahi State Historical Park. To this day, this picture above of Pololu Valley may be one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken.
Like many of my vacations, this particular day in Hawaii actually had us hiking and snorkeling in multiple spots, though I tend to pick one location to focus on for my blog post title. In this case, hiking to “the end of the world” works on two levels. Not only does it refer to the area where we watched the sunset that evening, but it also adequately expresses the way we started our morning in Hawaii on January 13th, 2018.
It’s a bit of an ordeal hiking at Makalawena Beach in Kailua-Kona. The access road from the highway to the parking lot is unpacked lava rock, and the first mile of the trail is a lava flow wasteland. But there’s a stark beauty in the desolation, and a white sand beach and tidal pools waiting at the end.
It’s been about five years since I’ve started hiking, and I’ve enjoyed a wide variety of interesting trails and parks. But at the time of writing this blog, my favorite trip so far has to be hiking Captain Cook Monument Trail in Captain Cook, Hawaii.
Only a few hours drive from Kona, my husband’s conference set up a day trip for us to go hiking at Volcanoes National Park. The park is huge, so we couldn’t cover it all in an afternoon, but we made a few stops at some of the most interesting locations.
While this blog focuses mainly on my hiking adventures, it didn’t seem quite right to label this only as a hiking entry. Sure, I did hike from my hotel to this spot and back, but the real treasure here is the amazing snorkeling at Queens Bath in Kona, Hawaii.
I spent my second day in Kona hiking at Kailua Beach. Starting out on foot from our hotel, I made my way through the Old Kona Airport State Recreation Area, finally arriving at Kailua Beach. I had the area to myself for the vast majority of my hike, and spent some extensive time climbing over the old lava flows and poking around the tidal pools.
One of my favorite recent vacations has to be visiting Kona, Hawaii in early 2018. As part of my “Looking Back” blog series, this entry may turn out to be one of my most in-depth reviews of a trip to date. So I’ll be approaching this vacation review a little differently. Instead of one all-encompassing overview, I’ll be splitting the days off into individual entries, as the majority of my time was spent hiking at different locations around the Big Island. Over the next few days, I’ll be adding new entries about my hiking (and snorkeling) memories from Kona and the surrounding area!