Advertisement
Published: November 8th 2013
Edit Blog Post
We started the day with a drive to Pahoa Town, and then to Lava Trees State Park. The mile from Pahoa to the park is amazing, with giant trees making a canopy over the road. The rain turned into a downpour as we arrived in the parking lot and didn't let up, so we changed our plans and drove a few minutes to the coast (rain stopped a mile down the road), where we took a gravel, one lane road through the jungle (there were homes down driveways from time to time) to the shore and then into a housing development, and back to Pahoa. Since the sun was out, we headed back to Lava Trees, only to end up in the same downpour we'd been in an hour earlier. We were only in a few miles radius the whole time....! We gave up on Lava Tree and headed to coast again.
Our first stop was the tide pools at Kapoho....lots of fish....sun...
Next we stopped the semi-natural warm water pool at Ahalanui Park, where a cement wall keeps the sea back from a natural pool fed by hot springs mixed with salt water. Lots of older people and
kids floating around...and life guards...even though the pool is only about 4 feet deep...stayed about 10 minutes.
Drove a mile down the coast to Isaac Hale Park, where there is small hot spring pool hidden in the jungle a few feet from the sea...soaked alone for a bit, and then were joined by a young couple who had met when the husband was working in Kazakhstan...When a mom and three kids showed up, it was time to leave. The parks in Hawaii are so civilized: most are free, have life guards, and showers... We showered and changed (almost got swarmed by bees...) and continued our drive to what is now the end of the road....
Kapuna was a village that been inhabited for many generations and very cherished by the Hawaiian people. It also boasted the best black sand beach in the world....in 1990, it all was covered by 50-75 feet of lava....
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/history/1990Kalapana/ After a walk across earth that is only 23 years old, to new black sand beach (the few feet that now exist), we had a great meal at the café there, which is pretty much all that's left of Kapuna now...I also
bought rambutan fruit in the parking lot there...delicious...
After our late lunch, we drove up the Saddle Road and then on to the Visitor Center on Mauna Kea, to look at the night sky. It's at 9200 feet, so we had to change from shorts to pants and fleece and jackets...unfortunately, it was cloudy, but we could still see the moon and Venus through the telescopes and that was very cool....On the drive up, we started in jungle by the coast, in the sun. Then we drove onto plains of small trees and lava, in rain. As we got higher, the rain clouds were below us, and it was dry again...
Hawaii (Big Island) is such an amazing place! You soak in a thermal pool or snorkel with schools of fish, and then drive above the clouds in just about an hour!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.23s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 32; dbt: 0.1852s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Having fun
This looks great