#3 Big Island, Hawaii

  Big Island, Hawaii

We know what you're thinking - adventure travel is for mountain climbers and extreme sports fanatics. But for your next adventurous getaway, we'd like to suggest bringing your family to the peak of the tallest mountain on earth. Seriously.

That's because the tallest mountain on earth is not Mount Everest - it's Hawaii's Mauna Loa, 33,132 feet high from ocean base to peak and with a total area of 10,000 cubic miles. Mauna Loa is also the world's largest volcano, and one of the five that make the Big Island great for enriching volcano tours for all ages. You can reach Kilauea during a low-impact hike and see lava flowing from its Pu'u O'o vent, as it has for the past 17 years.

Discover how the Hawaiian Islands were formed by millions of years of undersea volcanic activity, and how they are still constantly growing and changing. Several tours can get you up close to the lava as it flows at an estimated 13,000 gallons per minute, often meeting the ocean with a blast of steam. Beneath the lava are villages, temples, roads and artifacts from Hawaii's rich Polynesian history; and each day, the island gets bigger as the molten lava cools into new land. For a truly spectacular view directly into a live volcano crater, you can take several tours by helicopter or airplane.