Randy Robertson/Flick Creative Commons
Not too many folks would put “Hawaii” and “RV trip” in the same sentence, but you can! And you should! The Big Island of Hawai’i offers scenic drives, natural splendor, and all the aquatic activities you can handle. Of course with one proviso, you can’t take YOUR RV without some seriously deep Bill Gates-style pockets. Good news is there are RV rentals on the island for those of us non-lotto winners who don’t have Scrooge McDuck’s vault of cash just laying around waiting to be used.
The two big towns on Hawai’i are Kona on the west side and Hilo on the east side. Both towns have the only airports so I suppose you should pick an east-side or west-side base of operations and fly there. And by fly there I mean fly from where ever you may be to Kona or Hilo, don’t hit Honolulu first and think you’ll catch a ferry, because there aren’t any. At the moment there feels like a kind of monopoly with inter-island flights, they are shockingly expensive for the distance flown, so if you plan on doing some island-hopping…make friends with people who have a boat.
But getting back to the RV side of things, Kona seems to be the place. Island RV offers camper RV’s and 14 passenger vans as well as guided tours of the Big Island. For those of y’all who prefer to drive yourselves, Big Island offers 1500 miles of roads through seven Protected Areas, Wildlife Refuges, and Historic Parks as well as five volcanoes two of which are extinct, one dormant, and two active. Hawai’i also offers the traditional gorgeous beaches with Punalu’u being the famous black sand beach. So if you’d like to learn to surf, work on that tan, swim, fish, or otherwise enjoy the sea it’s never very far away.
Akaka Falls is a breathtaking waterfall located in a state park about 20 miles north of Hilo on the Hawai’i Belt Rd (route 19). It’s 422 feet tall, and you can view it at various points along a trail through the park. Another beautiful waterfall on the island is at Rainbow Falls State Park located in Hilo. It’s an 80 foot tall waterfall and there is no entrance fee for this park.
If you head to Hawai’i on vacation and choose to rent an RV and continue that lifestyle while on vacation, please drop us a line at PPL Motorhomes.com and tell us all about it