For the bike rides: Big Island Bike Rides

Kona Manta Ray Night Snorkel

There’s a bunch of companies that offer this near Kona on the Big Island. They take you out to sea at night and everyone grabs onto a big floater with lights under it to watch the giant mantas feed on plankton and do acrobatics.
Here’s a video I made of the non-deleted parts… damn GoPro.

Mokupapa Discovery Center

This is a nice free little museum in downtown Hilo. Definitely worth dropping by for 30mins of learning about the entire chain of Hawaiian Islands that extends far beyond the ones people inhabit.

The main hall.

Info about the local sea life. Yes everything is very endangered, don't touch anything ever.

Monk seals. Hope to see some of these guys before I go!

There's a big aquarium in the back with fish you're likely to see while snorkeling.

Upstairs there's a huge collection of artifacts/bones of all kinds. Wtf is this fish?

There's also a gallery next to it. It had sculptures made of Tsunami debris on exhibit.

What an absolute chad this guy.

Hawaii Science and Technology Museum

I’m not exactly sure how you get inside this one. The address just leads you inside this weird hotel building above a cafe and then it’s one random door that says you’re being filmed. I opened it and it was just chairs and desks with nobody. I WOULD SAY MAYBE DON’T GO HERE.

Pacific Tsunami Museum

Ok this one is sort of underwhelming. Costs 15$ and it’s basically a broken up wikipedia article about Hilo and Tsunamis printed out and posted on walls. The museum is located in an old bank that survived a devastating Tsunami in 1946.

This is basically the museum. If you enjoy reading, this is the museum for you.

Have all the reading in the world!

They made a little movie theater inside the old bank vault, that's kind of cool.

Once you're sick of reading you can sit and listen to tsunami stories.

The takeaway of that museum is: If the water recedes while you’re on the beach, run away.

Imiloa Astronomy Center

19$ admission. This was my favorite stop on Museum Day in Hilo. That’s right every place so far I’ve visited in one single day because that’s how I roll. What the hell are you doing with your time if you can’t visit 5 museums in a day? I even walked most of this.
It’s a learning center with a bunch of stuff for kids and it has a planetarium where you can watch 2 different movies and get a presentation about the night sky in Hawaii. Pretty cool.

Main entrance/hall

Starts with a lot of info about early inhabitants of the islands.

Chill bean bag section where you can watch moss grow and blow in the wind.

There's a fun "underwater cave" glow-in-the-dark tunnel.

With sea monsters

The main hall has lots of exhibits about volcanoes, geology, stars, planets etc.

Didn't have time to bike the error message on this trip but would love to. Epic.

I think that planet was also supposed to be some interactive projection thing.

Love these boats.

Little movie about the observatories on top of Mona Kea.

One of the movies inside the planetarium. Pretty relaxing. This place is worth a little stop.

Another fun thing to do in museums is to try and figure out what year they made an exhibit:

This is the Palm Garden near the University. I thought it was an actual botanical garden of some sort but it’s just a small garden with dozens of species of palm.

This is the botanical gardens at the university. Once again seems like just a little garden you can walk in. Like, if it’s free, is it even worth looking at? Like. Come on.
Though the main reason I didn’t visit either garden is that they’re outside and this was going on:

This was early in the trip and I was fully ready to spend the rest of my time cycling in this BS. Fortunately I managed to dodge this kind of weather ( because I’m smart ).

Pana’Ewa Rainforest Zoo

Saving the best for last. Stopped here on my transition day between the Hilo Airbnb and the Volcano Airbnb. In the most un-Hawaii fashion ever this zoo somehow has free admission.