BudgetTravel

• Volcano Inn Second St., Volcano, 800/628-3876, volcanoinnhawaii.com, $69

Food

Pretty Hapuna Beach (Susan Seubert) FEBRUARY 2007 ISSUE • Table of Contents • Secret Hotels of the Riviera Maya • James Turrell: Sky High • Dubai: Just Add Money • Eat Like a Local: Melbourne • Five Hotels: What 99 Pounds Buys in London • Road Trip: Hawaii • 40 Best Vacations

• Kiawe Kitchen 19-4005 Haunani Rd., Volcano, 808/967-7711, pizza $14.50

Activities

• Hawaii Volcanoes National Park 808/985-6000, nps.gov/havo, $10 per carload

Day 3: Volcano to Hawi

First thing in the morning we go to Hilo, a port town with ramshackle old factories on one block, upscale stores and restaurants on the next. While scrutinizing the many bear paintings at friendly, laid-back Bear's Coffee, we dig into waffles and "bear-sized" cinnamon rolls.

There are last-minute openings for Blue Hawaiian helicopter rides over Volcanoes, but they're pricey and it doesn't make sense for all of us to go. Jessica wins out, seeing as the fumes kept her from seeing much inside the park. We drop her off at the airport and head back to wander under the tarps set up for the Hilo Farmers Market. I want to buy some fresh produce, but then wonder what I'd do with a pineapple. Will and I instead split a malasada, a traditional, sugar-covered, hole-less doughnut first brought to the islands decades ago by Portuguese immigrants.

Back at the airport, Jessica is jazzed about the helicopter ride, speaking a mile a minute about oozing streams of lava and waterfalls as she scrolls through pictures on our digital camera. North of Hilo, Highway 19 squiggles along with ocean on one side, mountains and unruly forests on the other. I thought we'd spend the night in Honokaa, but the options are limited. A nice woman at the Hotel Honokaa Club doesn't think it's a great idea for us to stay with a toddler--the walls are super thin, she admits--and recommends a hotel a couple of hours away, in Hawi (pronounced "ahvee"). I'm again concerned that the hotel, the Kohala Village Inn, costs too little ($65) to be up to snuff, but I make a reservation nonetheless.

Honokaa's main street is cute, with a handful of cafés and secondhand stores, but we get back on the road in the hope of putting William to bed by nightfall. As we zip through Waimea and see plenty of places to stay, I regret booking a room in Hawi. But the drive north of Waimea is another marvelous one, with lime-green hills and cactus-like plants around every bend, and 13,796-foot Mauna Kea rising above the clouds to the south.

A shuttered restaurant in front of our inn has handwritten signs that read KEEP OUT! and DANGER! Odder still, the parking lot is lined with mounds of rocks and what appear to be tombstones. In the lobby, a woman named Annie explains with a warm smile that the hotel restaurant is being renovated and recently served as a haunted house for local kids. The plantation-style hotel, with palms and grass in the courtyard and wood floors and ceiling fans in the rooms, is more charming than I thought possible for the price.

The Kohala Rainbow Café is about to close when we arrive, but the staff takes pity on us, making sandwiches that we eat at a table outside, across the street from a statue of King Kamehameha. I devour the Hawaiian bleu--chicken breast, honey-glazed ham, Swiss cheese, grilled pineapple--and the pineapple is so sweet and tasty I regret not buying that one I coveted at the Hilo Farmers Market.