The more you know the better off you are, so find out as much as you can and make the most of your vacation in Hawaii. Your best choices are to borrow books and magazines and ask your friends and acquaintances, but you need two indispensible tools.

A good guide book tells you where everything is, what it's like, and how to contact them. Prices, rates, and fees change all the time, so you shouldn't rely on a book for that.

Hawaii Island Sunset (photo: HVCB, Kirk Lee Aeder)

Guide books come in all varieties from slick and colorful to handy and essential, but the measure of a good guide book is does it answer your questions and does it add to a more enjoyable vacation.

I've paged through a lot of Hawaii guide books, and find that the one I have to have on my desk is the Hawaii: All-Island Guide. (Over on the left is a link to the book at Amazon, where you can browse through the guide and buy it.)

A map of Hawaii will save you hours of frustration both before and during your trip, and you should treat the map as your own pictueresque notebook.

A friend of mine tapes tracing paper over his travel maps. Then he writes notes from his guide books all over the tracing paper. (He only tapes one edge down so it's hinged and he can lift his notes out of the way if he has to.)

Another handy tip is to use a couple of colored highligher markers to trace driving routes or other special things, like not-to-be-missed sights.

With a map and guide book all you need are friendly recommendations and the personalized touch. If you'd like a better virtual look at places in Hawaii, there are dozens of sites that have pictures of Hawaii, but one of the most useful picture collections I've seen is the From the Skies of Paradise... series of aerial photos.

From the Skies of Paradise... series of five aerial picture books of Hawaii.  Oahu ::  Maui ::  Big Island ::  Kauai ::  Hawaii (whole state)

Hawaii: The All-Island Guide The Hawaii travel guide. 6th ed. has 1104 pages.