Last day in Hawaii and trip home

Our last day in Hawaii, Boo! We went back to the Hungry Hono for breakfast and another frappe. For some reason the thin mint frappe did not taste the same as before, we think because a different person made it. Since our flight wasn't until 9:00 at night we had a whole day to explore and generally relax. The first thing we did after breakfast was lay by the pool for a little while until it was checkout time so that Deb could get some color and I could just relax. After that we did a little shopping for souvenirs at Walmart and then went to the Sadie Seymour Botanical Gardens. This was maybe the smallest Botanical Garden in the world, unfortunately there wasn't a lot to see here, but it was free. We checked out the thrift shop right there, but it was a very thrifty thrift shop, everything there was at least 20 years old.

We then went over to a small beach and watched some kids body surfing which was kind of entertaining, we also just kind of relaxed and enjoyed the sea breeze. From there we drove to a farmers’ market where we bought some more souvenirs. From there we walked over to the Kona shopping village and browsed through some shops. It was actually pretty hot, and mall-itis was really starting to hit me. Because of this we decided it was time for early dinner. We ate at the Kona canoe restaurant right on the ocean where we made a meal of happy hour appetizers and finished everything off with mud pie, which was delicious. We lingered there a bit and watched the sun go down. A pretty good way to end our time in Hawaii.

Once we got done with dinner we had to head to the airport and gas up the rental car along the way. Our gate at the airport was open to the outisde on all sides, like a gate patio. Of course, a woman waiting by us told Deb how much she liked her nails. We got on our plane to Seattle on time with no issues, we had a 2-hour layover in Seattle, so we grabbed some breakfast at the airport and waited for our last plane home. Our flight home was interesting at the end as it was very windy in Chicago, so we had a pretty bumpy ride coming in but we got in on time and made it home to our house. 7 flights, 7 airports, 3 rental cars and 2 sons providing airport drop off and pick up, quite a trip. Oh and 4 people told Deb they love her nails, actaully a couple less than I was expecting.

Hawaii is a beautiful place; I am really glad I got to visit. I’m not sure if we’ll be back but if we do return, we will be sure to hit Kauai, as it is supposed to be the most beautiful of all the islands.

Volcanoes National Park

Today we started with breakfast at the coffee shack which is right on the way to the volcanoes National Park. Interesting place, you eat basically hanging over the side of steep hill that is covered in vegetation. Deb made friends with a lizard that was hanging out on the window frame, feeding it jelly from the little container it was in. Food was OK, my coffee was pretty good.

From there we drove out to Volcanoes National Park. Entering the park was a little confusing because the visitor center is being renovated and was closed. So, we had to drive down to where they have military housing to get any information. The temporary visitor center was packed, unfortunately there were a few tours stopping at the same time as us. So, we really didn't get much information there at all, just stopped for a minute, used the restroom, and then got back on the road. We followed the crater rim road to the lookout at the end so we could see Kilauea. The volcano wasn't doing much when we were there, just a lot of steam you could really smell the sulfur dioxide hey, it was almost too much. We walked around that area a little bit, getting different views and pictures of the volcano. We tehn headed over to an old crater and cinder cone formed by an active part of the caldera which has been dormant for the past 50 years. Here we hiked Devastation Trail through the cinder field by the cone. This was interesting as you can see the cone and also how vegetation is coming back to the area. We then we got back in our car and headed over to Chain of Craters Road, which ends where the latest lava flow rolled over it on the way to the sea. This road goes past several old craters (hence the name). It goes through miles of nothing but old lava. When we were there it was very misty/raining, which added to the atmosphere. I was reminded of Frodo and Sam going through the Desolation of Smaug. We stopped at several places along the way to see different views. The last place we stopped before the end of the road was the Holei Arch lookout. This is a great view of the very high vertical cliffs and a sea arch coming out from them. Eventually we came to gates closing off the road, but you could see that it continued for a while, so we decided to walk up the hill on the road to see where it ended. Once we walked about a mile to the top of the hill we were surrounded on both sides by new lava. However, the road just kept going as far as we could see. I'm guessing they blasted the lava flow and made room for the road.

After all this it was getting pretty late, so we drove back to the main part of the park by the old visitor center and went to volcano house. Volcano house is hotel you can stay at, and they also have a couple of restaurants. We ate at George's Lounge which has floor to ceiling windows overlooking the volcano crater really a cool view, we got some pretty nice sunset pictures out of this, unfortunately the food basically sucked. After dinner we headed back to the hotel with more winding roads in the dark, that seems to be our theme for this trip.

Coffee coast tour, coffee, farm tour, and luau

We started today with breakfast at the Hungry Hono, the food was pretty good, and we shared a thin mint frappe to go, that was really good. We then set out on the coffee coast Guidealong tour.

First stop on this tour is Kealakekua Bay, where Captain Cook arrived on the islands for the first time. Unfortunately, this is the same bay where, when he returned a month later, an incident where the natives stole a boat and Cook's crew tried to kidnap a chief, led to him being killed. In any case, it’s pretty little bay.

We then continued down the coast, mostly through a lava field, to the Place of Refuge. Place of Refuge is a spot where people could go to avoid being persecuted either for a crime or if they were fighting against the local natives in a war. The way it worked is they could stay there and not have to worry about being hurt until a certain amount of time after which the local Kahuna would set them free. This area was pretty interesting, and they had some really cool old tiki statues facing the sea. We also enjoyed watching the fish that were in the tidal pools and all teh goats that were wandering around the area. After that, we had some time so we decided to do be free coffee plantation tour. We found the Greenwell tour and we are really glad we did. We got there at 1:53 and there was a tour leaving at 2:00. Our guide, Nate, was really cool and really informative. He did a great job of showing us all kinds of different plants that were growing on the plantation and also explaining the whole process of turning coffee beans into coffee-from picking them from the trees to roasting the beans and packaging them. This was a great tour.

After that we had some time to kill before we had a luau on the resort property, so we laid around the pool for a little bit. The luau was OK; it was kind of cool to watch the dancing, especially the fire dancing, but it's the kind of thing that now that I've done it once in my life, I don't think I have to do it again. After the luau we were pretty stuffed and just went back to the room and relaxed.

Big Island circle tour

Today we started with breakfast at the 808 Grindz, a small little place with decent food for decent price. We sat outside on wobbly chairs and table, you order at a window inside and they bring the food out to you. It was a very small place but the food and coffee were pretty good after breakfast we started on our circle tour of the Big Island, this is an all day trip.

We stopped at a lot of really good lookouts, the best may have been Waipio valley, which gives a really good view of big deep valley and the coastline. We also met a little cat friend that was hanging out there. During our all day drive we passed through several small towns and saw some beautiful waterfalls, the nicest of which was the Ak Ak Ak falls. We also stopped at another statue of King Kamehameha, there seems to be a lot of these on the different islands. I guess he was kind of a big deal, having united the islands and all that.

Since there was so much to see and this is a pretty big island we were kind of pressed for time as we got towards the end. So we stopped at a restaurant in Hilo called Jackie Reys Ohana Grill and ordered food to go and ate while we drove the “Hilo Loop” of the GuideAlong tour. That was pretty good food and did the job for dinner. After we grabbed dinner we stopped at Rainbow Falls and the Kaumana Caves lava tube, among other places. I guess you can walk pretty far into the lava tube, it's actually 25 miles long. But we just walked into the entrance and looked around a little bit as we would have needed a headlight or at least a good flashlight to walk any farther. As we continued driving around the south part of the island we noticed how much the landscape changed from one area to the other. We basically went through almost every type of landscape you could imagine other than a glacier. It was a pretty interesting drive. Needless to say we were pretty wiped out by the time we get back to our hotel in Kona.

Lazing by pool, flight to Big Island

Today we had breakfast and then laid around the pool for a bit before our flight. The flight to Honolulu was delayed almost an hour, most of that was spent sitting in the plane. We were in danger of missing our connection, so they let us off the plane first. We speed walked 4 gates and made it with just a minute to spare. The next flight was uneventful. We picked up our car and then drove from Hilo over the saddle road to Kona, which took about 2 ½ hours, more hilly twisty roads in the dark. We got to the Outrigger Kona about 8. Since it was so late, we just ate at Piko, the restaurant at the resort. Over-priced blah food, won’t eat there again. A bit of an adventurous travel day, but we made it to the big island.

Whale watching tour

We started with breakfast at the hotel. Then we drove down to Lahaina area to catch our whale watching trip. The first we drove around the area to see how it was doing after the fire two years ago it's still pretty desolate there are large areas that have not recovered yet. In some places there was nothing but burned-out lots with no buildings on them. But in other places the fire didn't touch anything, so they were still good. It also looks like they are working quite feverishly to get the damaged areas back up and running.

I wasn't sure how the whale watching trip was going to go, because at first the guy in the shop was kind of rude to us. When we asked why it said to be prepared to go barefoot his answer was “because everything's more fun barefoot “. And the way he said it was like “what are you stupid?”. All we wanted to know was what was the reason for it and if we could wear water shoes, Some of us have very white feet and were afraid of getting sunburn on them. However, once they took us to the boat everything got much better.

We met our captain, Jack and the marine biologist, Jess. When I asked them if I could at least wear my socks they said “sure, do you want your shoes?” I told them I was just worried about getting sunburned and they were very cool about it-Captain Jack said, “yeah you don't want sunburn on your feet”, thank you! We then went out looking for whales.

At first, I was excited to see a water spout off in the distance and we headed that way. But then the captain noticed another whale and followed where he was going. He had a suspicion and he was right, there was a “whale fight” going on. About 8 to 10 males were battling each other to mate with a female who they were all following. The law says we can't get closer to 100 yards before putting the boat into neutral and that's what Captain Jack did. However, the whales don't seem to care about that law, and they swim much closer to our boat than 100 yards. This was a really cool experience as we watched them swim all over the place battling each other, occasionally you would just see one whale come out of the water sideways, which meant that another whale had gone underneath him and bumped him up. We must have followed these whales for an hour, one of the most amazing things I've ever done. I think we were very lucky to come upon this on our first whale watching trip.

After this great experience we had an early dinner at the Aloha Mixed Plate which is right there by the water I thought my food was really good and they had a pretty good guy playing music for us. Pretty much a great day in Lahaina, I'm glad the area is still able to operate despite all the damage. After that we drove the shoreline for a bit and ended up at a blow-hole GuideAlong told us about. This was kind of a let-down, as it wasn't really "blowing'much. But it was a nice drive and good way to end the day before heading back to the hotel.

Sunrise over Haleakula, napping and lazing by the pool, lame distillery “tour”

Got up at 3 to go to Haleakala, which meant more driving twisting hilly roads in the dark. We got there a little after 5 , so we had plenty of time before the sunrise at 6:45. Most of the show is actually before the sun rises, as the light slowly fills the sky. We knew it would be cold up there and we dressed warm, but freezing winds still made us cold., The sunrise was spectacular, and glad we got to experience it, even with the early wake up and cold. On the way back we stopped at Komoda bakery for cream puffs and masaladas, which Kendal recommended. I liked the cream puffs but Deb didn’t care for them. Back at the hotel we took a nap then went to lunch at Spoon and Key-where the woman taking our order complimented Deb's nails. We went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon laying around the pool.

We then went to Organic Ocean Distillery for a tour and tasting. This was pretty much a disaster as at first were given no or vague directions “Meet you on the other side “- we are inside a shop, where is the other side? It was raining pretty good, so instead of walking around the property we just went to an outside bar and basically just had a tasting. We were the only 2 people and our host David, in his 5th week, was terrible. He basically just recited a memorized script and his low taking monotone made any little jokes he threw in fall flat. At one point he asked us if we were staying in the West or South part of the island. Since where we were staying was both South and West of where we were I didn't know how to answer that . David needs to learn that his guests are not locals most of the time . Deb was really just there for the tour, so this was kind of doomed from the start, but he did nothing to save it for her.

We then headed back to the hotel. We went to Matteo's Osteria, right behind the hotel, for dinner. We didn't have a reservation, so we ate at the bar. It was pretty good Italian food, then it was basically time for bed after a really long day.