Tide Pools at Kaloko-Honokohau National Park

For the morning of day eight I originally planned for us to go snorkeling at Kahaluu Beach; however, we had another beach day planned for tomorrow and instead we opted for a late morning start with a leisurely breakfast at Island Lava Java, followed by some more shopping (mainly because my son’s hiking sandals desperately needed to be replaced). At this point we all needed a little break from the sun and the heat. Island Lava Java was an adorable little restaurant, they have recently moved to a larger location, with fantastic smoothies! Our breakfast was tasty, although we felt it was a bit overpriced (good luck finding food on the island that isn’t), but the smoothies were worth every cent! In fact, we went back for more smoothies in the afternoon.

The rest of the day’s plans involved hiking and exploring the tide pools, a luau for dinner and I finally relented about watching the Blackhawks play (it was play-off season after all). The drive from the restaurant to the tide pools was under 15 minutes. Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park is 1,160 acres. It is open from dawn to dusk and has no entrance fee. We wanted to explore the tide pools, so we timed our visit with low tide. You can find out low and high tide for all the islands by checking this website.  As we were walking from the parking lot to the tide pools we came across this delightful sign.

Keep Your Clothes On, People!

We found this sign to be absolutely hysterical. We had not come across it at any beach where you might actually think it would be a problem, only at the tide pools, where we could not imagine why anyone would want to walk around with out their clothes on to look for sea critters.

Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park

We did have the entire area to ourselves for most of our adventure. I am happy to report that the few people we did see were appropriately clothed. We stayed for a little over an hour, it was just too hot to stay out longer.

Low Tide at Kaloko-Honokohau

All of the area you can see in the foreground is underwater at high tide. You are allowed to walk around on the rock and look for sea life in the pools you find throughout the area. It is very slippery here. Again, not an appropriate place to wear flip flops. I was in gym shoes, my daughter was in hiking boots and my son and husband were in hiking sandals.

Life in a Tide Pool

I am usually not very good at spotting sea life in tide pools, but it was so abundant here, even I couldn’t miss it. My son was patiently pointing out all the things I was missing as I kept pointing out all the obvious little creatures that I could see. My son has a salt water tank at home so we were trying to find things that he had in his tank. Had it not been so hot, my husband and my son would have been content to stay here until the tide came back in. Meanwhile, I was on a mission to find a turtle. Now, turtles are relatively large, you would think they would be easy to find. In fact, they are if your name is not Tracy. I was wandering about looking for both turtles and trying to find something in the tide pools that my son had not yet spotted when I practically stumbled upon this!

Turtle at Kaloko-Honokohau

It looked like a rock with fins. I felt it was spectacularly camouflaged and was so happy that I saw it before I tripped over it. My family had been watching me cluelessly walk towards it for the past few minutes and were about to shout, “Stop Walking!” I’m not sure how they were always able to spot the turtles way before I ever saw them. They are legally protected and I quickly backed myself up the 10 feet clearance that you must give them. I took a lot of pictures of my new friend.

Posing with my new friend

Of course, I needed a picture with my new friend as well. After this picture, my friend lifted its head out of the water and started making turtle noises. I said excitedly to me daughter, “It’s talking to me!” She said, “Probably because it’s annoyed that you won’t leave.” I figured she was probably right, although to this day I prefer to think it was just introducing itself to me, so I said good-bye and happily walked back to the beach.

It was a good day, no one had any complaints. We only wished it would have been cooler, but that was out of our control. There are also wetlands that you can visit at this park using a different entrance. Originally we had planned  a quick visit there, but we were really starting to struggle with the heat and needed to get out of the sun because tomorrow’s adventure was a nice long visit to the exquisitely beautiful Hapuna Beach State Park. As always, wishing you happy travels and fantastic adventures in this thing called life!

If you are interested in any of our other tide pool adventures, check out the links below.

Snorkeling at Napili and Kapalua Beaches

Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge

Visiting the Point Loma Tide Pools in San Diego

(All pictures are available for purchase at full resolution through Alamy. If you see something you like, click on the link. If you are unable to find it, use the Contact Me page and I will make sure the image is available.)

                                                                   Pin for later!

Visiting the Tide Pools at Kaloko-Honokohau National Park