The best advice for a fall visit to the Hawaiian Islands? Park it! Not sit on the beach and watch the waves "park it." Not a wander the great green gardens kind of "park it." This kind of "park it" is an invitation to visit the eight, count them - eight - national parks in the State of Hawaii.

To offer a bit of historical perspective, Washington D.C. was declared a national historic site in 1790. Yellowstone became a national park in 1872. The African Burial Ground was named a National Monument in New York in 2006. Over the years, the National Park System has honored, set aside and named hundreds of amazing places; battlefields, islands, lake and seashores, rivers, home sites, monuments, trails and preserves across the country and the Pacific. Hawaii¹s first national park, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, was founded in 1916.

Fall is the perfect time for a Hawaii park adventure. The days are cooler and the trails less crowded than the busy summer family vacation months. Parks can be reached by air, rental car and mule rides. In Hawaii, the National Park Service has named some of its most unique, accessible parks, honoring pre-recorded-to-modern history.

Hawaii has the only national park with a twenty-plus year continuous molten lava flow. Hawaii¹s park sites date to a time long before a voyager named Captain Cook took word of the islands to his western world. Hawaii¹s national parks, trails and preserves celebrate the temples, cities and fishponds of ancient peoples. They are adorned with the earliest recorded Pacific history, petroglyphs. They top a 10,000-foot mountain with a crater large enough to hold Manhattan. They honor the human history and inhuman treatment of a people suffering a dreaded disease and celebrate the brave warriors who protected America.
 

BEGIN ON THE BIG ISLAND

Hawaii¹s Big Island has four of the state¹s national parks and one National Historic Trail. The parks on this island are drive up and drive in, with easy walking trails, museums, and spectacular sites to see.

Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Par

Three major parks are located on the Kona side of the Big Island. Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park, a place of refuge, is protected by the "great wall" 1,000 feet long, 10 feet high and 17 feet thick, constructed entirely without mortar. Warriors or commoners who arrived there were protected. Trails here are easy to walk. Cultural specialists share legends.
Green sea turtles nibble the limu (seaweed) along the rocky shore. They are protected but often "pose" for photos.

Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park is the site of Hawaiian settlements. The park's massive fishponds, built before the arrival of European explorers, are an amazing example of successful aquaculture. The goal of the park restoration is to rehabilitate and restore the fishponds so they will again function, providing fish harvest for the community. Centuries of storm
damage have caused movement of stones in the original walls. Richard Boston, manager and archaeologist at the site says, "we have reached a milestone in restoration at this park, even using divers to move and replace underwater stones in their original wall locations." Petroglyphs at this site include a carving of Captain Cook's ship.

The Puukohola Heiau National Historic Site is a sacred stone heiau (place of worship) known as the Temple of the Hill of the Whale, built over 200 years ago by Kamehameha the Great. The sacred temple measures 224 feet long by 100 feet wide. It is 16 to 20 feet high on the landward side. Workers lived on the surrounding hills for years as they gathered and fitted the massive stone structure.

The Big Island¹s Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail is a 175-mile preservation corridor filled with cultural significance, including hundreds of early Hawaiian settlement sites.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has America¹s only active, continuously erupting, volcano. The park features ancient petroglyphs, tree-fern forests, miles of hiking trails and extraordinary museums. According to Dr. Dieter Mueller-Dombois, one of the foremost botanists in the Pacific, "this park is the only ecosystem on the planet where just a few steps from the road visitors can stand atop a live volcano, at the edge of a 200 year-old lava flow, and see a new-growth forest sprouting from soil blown into the crevices." Equally amazing is that the site is only a 30-minute drive down the mountain to the place were fresh lava pours into the ocean. Mueller-Dombois' book, Life From the Ashes, soon will be published by Mutual Publishing, tells a Stephen Spielberg-worthy tale from 1959 of the 36-day eruption of Kilauea Iki, the 400-foot deep lava lake that devastated the rainforest and of the new growth forest returning in only 50 years.

In the park, Crater Rim Drive runs in every direction, leading to steam vents and sulfur banks that feel like a sauna for the face. Deep in the vent, wild orchids thrive surrounded by silver lava mounds. A walk through the 450-foot long Thurston Lava Tube is a truly Jurassic experience. Well-marked trails are everywhere. The Jaggar Museum is a technophile¹s delight, filled with seismometers, computers, videos and how-to-be-a-volcanologist displays.

According to the volcanologists at the Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory, great fountains of lava have and may again shoot skyward in the ultimate fireworks show. The Kilauea Visitors Center offers a visual "master's degree" in volcanoes. At the Volcano Art Center, island artists show and sell international quality works of art, inspired by Pele, goddess of the volcano. On the way down Chain of Craters Road, to view the moving lava show, the trail leads to thousands of petroglyphs, carved in the ancient lava fields.

Kilauea appears to be a "civilized" volcano, sending lava through tunnels and tubes from deep in the heart of the mountain, creating hundreds of acres of new land as it flows into the sea. At the bottom of the Chain of Craters Road, a well-marked trail leads hardy hikers to a view of the ocean-side lava action. Safety signs and warnings must be observed, but on a clear day the photo op beats any other vacation snapshot.

Volcano House, originally built in 1846, is the park¹s hotel, perched on the edge of Kilauea Caldera. The flames in the lobby fireplace are said to carry the image of Pele. The "new" hotel was completed in 1941. Lobby windows look directly into the caldera. Photos taken here tend to look like the moon.

MANHATTAN ON MAUI

No rumbling can be felt on the island of Maui, but it was a short two centuries ago that the volcano that formed East Maui erupted. At 10,000 feet, Haleakala National Park, the House of the Sun, is the entire top of a dormant volcano. That's dormant, not extinct, meaning it could become active again. The crater at the top, 3,000 feet deep, 21-miles around, could easily hold Manhattan. Thousand-foot high cinder cones rise from the bottom of the crater. Some life forms here are among the rarest on earth, including the strange silversword plant that grows for 20 years, shoots up a 9-foot high bloom and dies. Here the nene (Hawaiian goose) runs wild, rescued from near extinction.

The most spectacular moment in a day on Haleakala is watching the light of the rising sun spill into the crater. Standing at the observatory railing, it is easy to imagine the demi-god, Maui, throwing a giant rope around the sun to slow it and make Maui days last longer. Across the summit, visitors can watch as the shadow of a 10,023-foot mountain recedes, bringing dawn to the West Maui mountains. The experience is equally as impressive at dusk as the sun goes down.

There are 36 miles of hiking trails in the crater. One- to three- day hikes are advised for strong hikers only. The high altitude requires moving slow. The "sliding sands" trail, much like the surface of the moon, was used for training by U.S. astronauts. Areas of the park are dry forest zones with 10 inches of rain per year. The other side of the mountain is lush rainforest with 400 or more inches of rain. The park stretches down the mountainside to the ocean.

MOLOKAI MEMORIAL

The Kalaupapa National Historical Park on the island of Molokai contains the site of the Hansen's Disease settlement where Father Damien de Veuster dedicated his life, ministering to the sufferers of leprosy. More than 8,000 persons in Hawaii were taken away from family and delivered to this remote point of land, separated from the world by thousands of feet of steep cliffs. Damien¹s grave and his church, St. Philomena, are the most visited sites. A cure for the disease was found in 1946, but the residents of the colony still live in the tiny community at the base of the world¹s tallest sea cliffs.

The settlement was once home to Hawaiian royalty. Deep valleys allowed abundant game hunting. Fish were plentiful. The park now easily claims the most unusual mode of arrival and departure travel, a mule ride down the 2,000- to 3,000-foot steep switchback trail. For the non-riders, tour planes can land at the tiny airport. No roads connect this hauntingly beautiful
location to the rest of the island of Molokai.

OAHU HONORS

It¹s a fact, Elvis Presley and Hawaii are connected far beyond his famous movie, "Blue Hawaii." Funds were needed to construct a gracefully arched memorial over the USS Arizona, the final resting place for 1,177 United States military crewmen who lost their lives in the World Ward II attack on December 7, 1941. Elvis volunteered a fund-raising concert. The USS Arizona Memorial, built by private contributions, is owned by the U.S. Navy and administered by the National Park Service. It is free, and open to the public, every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year¹s days.

Visitors can tour the museum, view a 20-minute documentary on the Pearl Harbor attack and board a Navy shuttle out to the Memorial. Inside, a solemn roster of names carved in marble stretches skyward. Everyday for the past 55 years, tiny oil droplets have risen to the surface, reinforcing the reality of this monument to our country¹s brave warriors.