The Hawa
iian Islands form a 1500 mile long Pacific Ocean archipelago between latitudes 19° N and 29° N that forms the State of Hawai'i, which confusingly, takes its name, Hawaiʻi, from the largest island in the group. This is why people living in Hawai'i call it "The Big Island". The Hawaiian archipelago represents the exposed peaks of a great undersea mountain range formed by volcanic activity over a hotspot in the earth's mantle. How appropriate that this information is from the Wikipedia web site. ("wiki" being the Hawaiian word for "quick" - that is also ironic because things on the island do not work at a wiki pace). At about 1,860 miles from the nearest continent, the Hawaiian Island archipelago is "the most isolated grouping of islands on earth" (Macdonald, Abbott, and Peterson, 1984).
The "windward" island group of five main islands is the part that tourists know as the Hawaiian islands. The main airport at Honolulu ("a city like any other big city") on Oahu is where most visitors land and usually stay. The more beautiful islands of Maui, Kauai and the Big island are usually side-trips. a few direct flights from the mainland are now available to the much smaller airports on Maui and Kailua-Kona
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