Few days after Thanksgiving, we traveled to Hawaii for a family vacation. We went to the Big Island and stayed at the excellent Hilton Waikoloa Hotel. If you are traveling with kids, this is absolutely the best place to stay on the Big Island (probably all of Hawaii). Sadly, Maggie could not come with us, so she stayed in Seattle and I ran by myself.

I have to say, I was surprised at how hard it was to find a nice place to run there. I examined the map and Google Earth in detail, asked around, but nothing obvious came up. Two options were mentioned, running in a circle on Waikoloa Beach Drive or running on Queen Ka’ahumany Highway and neither one seemed appealing.

At the end, I ran down on Waikoloa Beach Drive to Ku’uali’I Place and then all the way to the Ocean by Lava Lava Beach club. Sandy part of the beach there was quite short, so I only took it to Marriott hotel and then run back to Waikoloa Beach Drive and my hotel. At hotel, I ran around the resort before getting back to my room. All this was only 3.4 miles. While the run was short, it was not too bad. Some of it was on the Waikoloa Drive, some on the beach, some through the resort.