Ho’omaluhia Botanical Garden

The Ho’omaluhia Botanical Garden has been on my travel bucket list for so long and so when we planned our trip to Oahu I knew we had to make it there. I wasn’t too sure what time was best to visit, where the iconic photos were I’d seen online and on social media were taken, or really anything about planning our visit…I just knew we had to check it out.

The gardens open at 9am so since I wasn’t sure how crowded it would get we planned on arriving first thing. There are a few parking spots outside of the gates. We decided to park there rather than drive in. Turns out, if you walk in you can go before 9am. The gate is manned by a guard and he doesn’t open the gates till 9am to drive in. They also seem to be very strict about photography and stopping on the road to snap pictures. There are signs posted outside the gates and all along the road. No photography, no drones, and no stopping in the middle of the road or pulling your car off to the side.

Since we realized once we got there that we could enter in before 9am we chose to walk with Mason. We brought our camera and crossed our fingers not to get called out by the guards or anyone else working on site. Luckily, it wasn’t much of an issue. We waited till we pasted the point of where the guards could see and snapped away, watching out for cars (of course) as they drove in after 9am.

But, I didn’t go to the Ho’omaluhia Botanical Garden just to capture content for my blog and social media and then go, though of course I was looking forward to those killer views and iconic shots to share with you all. We walked all the way to the garden and took the hike to the lakes where I had seen images of hundreds of fish in a small area. Mason is all about water creatures and see life so I figured he’d love to see the fish! The entire walk was absolutely stunning, yes the humidity was killing me in my dress but it was more than worth it. We had a blast and every time we got a cool breeze along the way, we were living for it!!

There were plenty of lookout points past where we went, but since we walked in, instead of drove we didn’t have much more in us than the walk back to the car. Mason got to ride on Justin’s smolders most of the way in and I either carried him or had him walking beside me on the way out. It was definitely an incredible experience and I am so happy we were able to work a visit into our trip. That same day we did more scenic driving and stopping at a few other spots we wanted to check out. But more on that in another post!

As always, thank you so much for stopping by the blog today! I hope you enjoyed the post.

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