The largest of the Hawaiian Islands is the original home of King Kamehameha, the landing spot of the first Portuguese explorers and the island for which the chain is named. You could call it the island that started everything. (Just don't call it the Big Island.)

DESPITE BEING the most geologically raucous member of its archipelago, with two still-erupting volcanoes, the island of Hawaii is remarkably peaceful. Its 4,028 square miles are home to a population of just 185,000 (compare that with 953,000 for the much smaller Oahu), and its nights are so dark that the world's foremost land-based observatory is located on one of its mountains. Even evidence of the erstwhile wrath of the island's five original volcanoes is mostly blanketed in the kind of greenery that compels people to pull over to the side of the road to stare, dumbfounded.

It's enough to make you wonder how the native Hawaiians ever got anything done - one lingering glance at a riot of pastel wild ginger flowers suspended above the fog of Rainbow Falls, and a fishing canoe might go unmanned for days. Over afternoon beers at a bar in Hilo, an expatriate French painter fully entranced by Hawaii (residents much prefer the original name to the "Big Island," the handle favored by mainlanders) put it this way: "This is a place for forgetting. It is so beautiful that it pushes all other thoughts from your head. The other islands, maybe you go for shopping or nightlife. But anything you might want to forget" - he waves a hand at the view of a sprawling banyan tree - "you can forget here."

DAY ONE | By the time you reach John and Michele Gamble's breakfast table at the Palms Cliff House Inn (1), a rambling, many-porched cliffside hacienda that appears to have been airlifted straight from Charleston, S.C., you've already begun to forget. You're sure you left your BlackBerry around here somewhere, but it seems that sometime between waking up to the crowing of the resident rooster and sipping a cup of creamy Kona coffee on your private waterfront lanai, you forgot to look for it. Breakfast this morning includes local lilikoi (passion fruit) juice, orange-cranberry muffins and fresh pineapple. Just when you think you're done, leaning back with a satisfied smile and taking deep breaths of air untouched by humans for more than 2,500 miles, John emerges from the kitchen with guava sweetbread French toast and mango-chicken sausage.

You tear yourself away from the inn's paradisiacal porch, explaining that - as much as you'd like to stay all day and watch the moody waves explode into sea spray against Hilo's rocky shore - you've got to go see a man about a volcano.

Even though Rob Pacheco of Hawaii Forest & Trail is waiting to drive you to Volcanoes National Park (2), you can't help but pull off Highway 19 when you see a sign for Pepe‘ekeo Scenic Drive (3). Given the jaw-dropping splendor of the scenery you've passed so far, you can't imagine what sort of panorama might warrant its own sign. The view from the drive, of a protected lava-stone cove with a lush fringe of flowering vines and palms, is worth the extra 10 minutes. When you finally board Pacheco's SUV, he whisks you off on a whirlwind tour of seething steam vents, glowing embers and sea cliffs made of old lava flows, the entire time recounting legends about the Hawaiian volcano goddess, Pele, for whom all hula dances are performed.

Soon you begin to fear that the rumbling of your stomach might frighten more tourists than the boiling lava lake at the center of Kilauea, so you stop for a late lunch of rabbit stew and venison with brandy and mushrooms at Kilauea Lodge (4), an unlikely German restaurant in an unlikelier village located just a mile from the volcano's maw. Formerly a YMCA lodge that housed kids in between summer camp volcano tours, it's now a homey respite in the woods, where saucy, meat-heavy meals fortify park visitors arrayed among thick-topped wooden tables.

After eating, you hop back into the car to race the sun to the top of another volcano, Mauna Kea (5), whose sunsets are the stuff of legend. Upon reaching a modest peak near the visitors center, you peer out at a panorama of rolling hills dotted with wisps of pink and orange clouds that reaches almost the whole way to the coast. You barely feel the cold as the sun hits the horizon and turns the landscape to gold.

Eventually, however, the weather has its way, and you hightail it back to sea level, shaking off the chill with a coconut shell of kava at Bayfront Coffee, Kava & Tea Co. (6). Halfway through your second coconut's worth, you begin to wonder how this degree of relaxation is legal. A farmer from the interior of the island has scooted his stool closer to yours, and is explaining in detail how his family grows and prepares the kava roots. He and the rest of the murmuring patrons in the tiny café dissolve into a quiet haze, and the next thing you know, you're back in your king-size bed, listening to the waves crash against the rocks.

DAY TWO | After another considerable breakfast at the Palms Cliff House, you hit the road for the North Coast. A few miles in, the rain forests on the island's eastern flank give way to high prairies carpeted in grass that looks softer than the down pillows you slept on last night. Horses graze by the shoulders, and the radio begins to play only country music. You've reached Waimea, home of the legendary Hawaiian cowboys known as paniolos.

The road on which you plan to hike into Waipi‘o Valley (1) is so steep that car rental agency representatives grimace at the valley's very name, so even though you're not hungry yet, you stop at Tex Drive-In (2) for portable sustenance in the form of sugar-coated malasadas, donutlike pastries brought to Hawaii by Portuguese settlers. Once they're safely stowed in your backpack, you start the hike - and immediately have to pause to take in the view (again).

Waipi‘o, which begins with a crescent-shaped black sand beach and arcs back into a gorge striped with 2,000-foot waterfalls, is the former home of King Kamehameha, the Hawaiian leader who united the islands in 1810. Gazing down into it, you can't imagine a more regal natural palace. That said, they weren't kidding about the road: You shoulder your bag, turn sideways and begin the descent toward the pea-green taro fields on the valley's floor.

By the time you return to your car, you're feeling pleasantly exhausted, and just a little delirious, so you drive back to Village Burger (3) in Waimea. There, you order an inch-thick Hawaiian ranch burger made of beef from the farms you've been driving past all day. It's so juicy that you work your way through a dozen napkins by the end, but it's absolutely worth the mess.

Thus sated, you make a visit to the spa at your new accommodations, Four Seasons Resort Hualalai (4), for additional delirium in the form of a 50-minute lomi lomi massage. Afterward, you feel you have no choice but to cap it off with a thyme and berry shave-ice cocktail the size of your head in the resort's oceanfront infinity pool.

In Hawaii, when the sun nears the water it's time for dinner, so you wander across the Four Seasons to Pahu i‘a (5) to take in the sunset, stopping at a pile of lava rocks to spot the resort's resident sea turtles lounging on the beach. Once seated, you watch your waitress craft ahi poke at your table out of tiny bowls of fish, seaweed, sesame oil and spices; small beads of condensation appear on your chilled glass of riesling. To your right, the torches stuck deep in the sand flicker in the trade winds. You start to suspect you've never been anywhere this romantic in your life. You are probably right.

DAY THREE | Much like its birds and flowers, Hawaii's fruit consists of colorful species rarely seen beyond the islands. You discover several amid the hubbub of the Kona Farmers Market (1) in Kailua-Kona. You'd been told about the tiny, flavor-packed apple bananas and sweet, seed-filled strawberry guavas, but it's the white pineapple - as acid-free as candy and twice as refreshing - that steals your heart.

The pineapple has awakened your appetite, which leads you down the street to Island Lava Java (2), where you tuck into an enormous plate of pancakes topped with bananas and macadamia nuts, with syrup-soaked Portuguese sausage on the side. Afterward, you stroll through the water front shopping district that surrounds the restaurant. At Savvy Bu‘tik (3), you buy a gauzy dress and a few pairs of gold and geode earrings to soften the looming blow of having to go home. Next, you visit Kailani Surf Co. (4) to pick up gifts for friends, including T-shirts emblazoned with stylized anchors, trees and waves, and a stuffed knit jellyfish.

By now, you've worked up a sweat, so you walk back toward the car and run smack into Hawaiian Ice Cones (5) in the middle of the parking lot. The store isn't much to look at, but its halo halo shave ice - a classic Filipino-Hawaiian dessert made of beans, candied fruit, coconut milk and a big scoop of magnolia-flavored purple ice cream - is cool and sweet and exactly what you needed.

After about 15 more minutes of wandering around, you're feeling ready to take a nap from all the sun and sugar, so you stop at Greenwell Farms (6) for a cup of Kona coffee and a handful of avocados from the trees along the sun-dappled drive. The staff insists that you take a tour, and before long you're standing in the shade of a towering coffee bush, tasting the bright red cherries and learning the intricacies of separating and drying the beans.

The sun is nearing the water again, which means it's time for a giant beer and a guava–barbecue pork sandwich in the sand at Huggo's on the Rocks (7). A band breaks out into some island standards while the tide rolls in, and the crowd gets rowdy. You are briefly reminded of college spring breaks - but in a good way.

Figuring the perfect end to your stay in a place famed for its animal life is a visit with the local manta rays, you embark on a night snorkel and dive with ocean guide Fair Wind (8). After donning a wetsuit, you hop off the boat to wait for the graceful sea creatures, which, when they finally appear, drift in lazy circles underneath you. It is the most arresting display of animal majesty you've ever seen, and you realize that your friends back home will hound you to no end if you don't show them a photo. Then, one 16-foot monster starts performing back flips to suck up the plankton your light has attracted. It would make for a glorious photograph. It really would. Unfortunately, you forget to take it.