Weekend on the Big Island

Blogging has almost become an endangered activity for me since Julia left. Work has gotten more intense and the demands of attending Master Black Belt class for myself have both sucked the time off my schedule. So I'm catching up now on things that happened almost a month ago. It's my goal this week to use my spare time to get to the point where I'm blogging for current events, but not before describing what happened on our trip to Hawaii - the Big Island!

DeAnna planned a trip to the big island for our anniversary which was on May 19th. It was a 3 day weekend for us, so we caught a ridiculously early flight out on Friday to Kona on the leeward side of the island (opposite Hilo). We were surprised that our hotel let us check in and drop off our bags, but we were checked-in and on our way by 7:30am!

Our objective on the first day was basically to tour the south side of the island ending up at Kilauea to see lava! Unfortunately, we arrived on the island on the worst days of VOG (Volcanic Organic Gasses) in recent memory. VOG looks like SMOG or for those folks from the plains states - a bad prairie fire. So while on most of our tour, we could not see anything but the nearby foothills of Mauna Loa or any of the mountains.

Still, we pressed on and first stopped by the ancient Hawaiian sacred site of Pu'uhonua o Honaunau. This place was where Hawaiian royalty lived and sacrifices were made. Large stone walls were hand-made near the surf on the lava shelf and a nice beach was nearby. A grass hut with carved wooden markers served as the priest's temple, a royal fishpond and burial place for kings make the site very interesting and peaceful - though there is more to the story...



Pu'uhonua o Honaunau is also known as the place of refuge. If anyone violated a law (kapu) like allowing their shadow to fall across the chief's shadow, they were put to death. But if they could make it to this place without being disemboweled, stabbed, burned or strangled, they could perform rituals and be forgiven. There were lots of interesting side notes about the place and a very friendly staff of two people who made DeAnna a grasshopper out of a palm frond.

Since there wasn't much to see looking back at the mountains, we admired the coastline. This is where you get authentic Kona Coffee and there are lots of little plantations with visitor's centers. We're not coffee drinkers, so we didn't stop - our next target was South Point - the TRUE most southern point in the USA (not the Florida Keys)! The road to South Point is pretty desolate, but the VOG was blowing in another direction, so the air was clear. There was a large wind farm with rusty turbines, but mostly just grassland until we reached the end of the road.

The water was very clear, but only accessible by jumping off a 50-foot cliff! Knowing how the currents can be, we kept well clear of the waves and scampered along the edge of the cliffs. If you look closely at this picture, you can see the wind farm to the left and the VOG-covered foothills of Mauna Loa.

So here I am standing as far south as I dared to stand (it was between waves). It was really kind of interesting to stand here thinking I was currently the most southern person in the United States. We took a bunch of pictures of course. No one was around to see us act goofy like tourists (as if I'd have cared anyway).

Here is a picture of the most southerly couple in the United States! The day was still young and remarkably we had cell phone signal, so I called my parents from South Point (it was late afternoon in the Eastern Time Zone).

After some more exploring, we jumped in the car and headed back to the highway to the Hana Hou deli- the most southern restaurant in the USA - for a sandwich and highly rated pie! Places like this could easily be missed without a good guidebook in this case, the ULTIMATE guidebook for all the Hawaiian Islands! Of course, some people might say not care about such things, but they never got any pictures, did they?



Back on the road to Kilauea, we made a quick stop at the Black Sand beach. It was tempting to take some sand, but we resisted. The sand was rough and the beach was rocky, very different from the many beautiful golden sand beaches we've visited.

Our next destination was the Kilauea caldera. I can't over emphasize the thickness of the VOG on that day. It made sightseeing virtually impossible. We stood at the edge of the crater and could barely see the floor. Many roads were closed because of the poor air quality so we decided to take in a couple of other sights before driving the long distance to possibly see some lava at the ocean's edge.

We toured the Thurston Lava Tube which is a tunnel created by flowing lava in ancient times. It was interesting, but kind of "touristy". Maybe it was the many tour buses that gave it away... Nonetheless, we pressed on our of the park to find the lava flow viewing area which was over an hour away!

As we came closer to the lava viewing area in Kalapana, we found lava across the road! This area was destroyed by lava in 1990 and the entire area of the island is covered in lava flows. It is strange to see pieces of civilization covered in lava rock! We arrived well before sunset but planned to stay after dark to see the lava flow. We overheard conversations that the viewing was spectacular after dark.

Once parked, we hiked about 1/2 a mile to the shoreline where we could easily see huge columns of steam rising into the sky. This was where the lava was flowing into the ocean. From our vantage point though it was a stretch for any camera lens - we were almost a mile away from the action, so we didn't get to feel the heat!

Still it was mesmerizing to watch the steam rise as we waited for dark. Sometimes, you could see a mini-tornado vortex spinning between the columns of steam! Darkness came slowly, but the crowds of people did not. The viewing area became jammed with people. Fortunately, we had arrived early enough to get a good parking spot and a good viewing spot with no obstructions. People snapped pictures constantly (as did we). Here are a few of the best photos we snapped that evening...



We walked back to our car in the dark and headed back to the other side of the island to our hotel. We decided to take the saddle road which snakes between the peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea... it was the technically shortest route, but terribly a nerve-wracking drive in total darkness along marginal, twisting paths. Fortunately, there was little traffic (the smart people had all gone another route) and lots of lane reflectors... so many, that I wanted to get a picture!












Imagine driving 60 miles an hour on a twisting two-lane road in total darkness while holding a digital camera for a timed-exposure picture... This is what you get! (Imagine how DeAnna felt watching me do this...) We didn't get back to the hotel until very late so we immediately hit the bed because we had to get up early the next morning for more adventures! It was a long, full, exciting day!