Tag Archives: driving

Last Actual Day For Reals

Typing this from my desk at home, so hopefully we’ll get some more photos and videos going shortly…we’ll see what the afternoon brings.

We woke up early and drove into town for another recommended breakfast place called Kono’s. Their logo is a pig riding a surfboard. We both had a breakfast burrito, which was excellent, although Miranda regretted not realizing that she’d gotten the kalua pork burrito instead of the bacon burrito.

We drove to a nearby beach that was said to have excellent snorkeling called Three Tables. When we arrived there were a ton of families swimming around, more than we’d seen anywhere yet. This was some pretty good snorkeling, better when you get closer to “the tables”, with lots of nooks to look into and lots of big fish to check out. The downside is that the surf was somewhat kinetic, and I didn’t want either of us swimming close enough to the wrong side of the rocks to be pushed around on them. We swam for a bit and then came in.

Back at our place, we packed our stuff up for the last time and said our goodbyes. This was a great place to stay. It had mediocre reviews on AirBnb, but the fact that it was right on the ocean made up for any perceived faults. Unless you needed A/C and restaurants right outside your door instead.

We drove back into Hale’iwa an had North Shore Tacos again, confirming their status as the best place to eat on the island.

Then we got started on a long drive. We’d showered and didn’t want to get wet and dirty again, so we planned to drive the rest of the island today. We drove along our little road until it ended in Ka’ena Point, the western most tip of O’ahu.

From there we drove down the middle of the island from Hale’iwa, and found our way on the H1 a massive highway of 4 lanes and a speed limit of 55. Considering every road I’d been on recently had been 25, this was a big deal. Unfortunately, there is no road connecting the island at Ka’ena Point, so we drove all the way down to Pearl City and then back up the western coast up to Ka’ena Point…from the other side. On this side the waves were pretty big, getting on 4-6 feet tall in some places, and we watched a few surfers who actually knew how to stand up and navigate a wave.

We drove back down the coast (with a pit stop or two in the middle) and ended up near ‘Ewa Beach and watched some more surfers as the sun went down.

Had dinner at Big Kahuna’s Pizza and Stuffs, there was no pizza. We had pizza sandwiches. And then had a frustrating drive around the airport area trying to find a gas station, with no luck and just returned the car as is. I think we lost $5 in the deal, which I consider just fine.

At the airport, it was empty. It took us 4 minutes to go through security, and we were first in line for baggage drop. We played a few games, rounding out Yahtzee out to 6 games with me being the overall winner for the weekend. Roll Through the Ages we playedΒ 7 games, but couldn’t find a sheet for one of them so only scored 6 and Miranda was the overall winner. Lastly we played Forbidden Island, which is a co-op game and I’m considering myself the winner for having convinced Miranda to play it with me. πŸ˜›

We got on the plane around 11:30, First Class. We’d upgraded our seats for $150 each, which was worthwhile for the leg room and extra recline. We both slept, but it was a horrible sleep. I woke several times and looked up to see the flight attendants having a conversation with a passenger right in front of me…like…I’m trying to sleep, shut up, sort of thing. The last time I woke up I decided to just leave it and read. I asked where we were in the flight, and she told me that we had just started to descend. O.O 5 hour flight, apparently I slept for it.

We landed in Bellingham, easily grabbed our stuff and got on a Quick Shuttle to Vancouver really quickly after getting some food. Fell asleep there, broken only by the border and the next thing I know we’re getting off at 12th and Cambie to grab a car2go home.

Now the cats are needy, I have a billion photos to process and a lot of other things that need doing and…hi!

Day 3, of the Diamond Head

We woke up early this morning because we had heard that getting a parking spot at Diamond Head is a real pain in the ass if you aren’t there by 9am.

We walked to Eggs ‘n’ Things, about a 7 minute walk away. All of the runners we saw were not well-muscled men and we theorized that all the smart people ran at 7am when the city was cool, whereas the well-muscled men ran during the day to show off how well-muscled they are. ENT served a delicious mac nut pancake, the first time in a while where Miranda’s meal wasn’t decidedly more delicious than my own. πŸ˜›

Packed up our stuff and headed out from Honolulu. It was a super quick drive to Diamond Head! And we got the third to last parking spot, at 8:45am…lathered up the sunscreen, slipped on the toe shoes and started walking. It was about 45 minutes from the parking lot to the top, at our pace, and lots of cool things to see on the way up. The hike up the trail has plenty of spots to stop and turn around and look at the crater behind you. As well, the further up you go, the more of Honolulu you can see rising up over the crater. Towards the end the hike becomes a lot of stairs. At the top you are rewarded with an amazing view of the city, the crater and the surrounding ocean, as well as an older military bunker that you get to climb into and walk up or down the stairs inside. Back at the bottom of the trail we bought shave ice and water, and it was delicious.

We hopped back in our car and drove highway 72 along the coast towards Kailua. This was a nice drive, winding around the mountains. We stopped at a scenic point and took some photos of a bunch of wind swept rocks – very beautiful.

Then we just drove. There was a bunch of places that we could have stopped at, but the further east we went the more the weather turned to shit. Dark clouds and rain. We didn’t want to get out of the car, let alone go swimming, even though it’s still 25C with the warmest water you can imagine.

We stopped for lunch at a place called Fresh Catch in Kaneohe. Miranda got the fish and chips, which were delicious and I got the fried poke. It was a little spicier than I would have preferred, but still amazing. An excellent restaurant!

Our place for the next few nights is about a half hour north of Kaneohe, and we just drove. It’s just up the street from a little beach park, and although the place we’re staying in is really nice, this is the sort of area where there are trucks parked in the yard that haven’t moved for years, and another yard with a giant truck with giant wheels with it’s hood open.

We settled in and then drove back a bit to get dinner at the Shrimp Shack. Miranda had the coconut shrimp (a pattern…) and I had garlic shrimp. SO MUCH GARLIC. Very tasty.

The weather is still pretty crappy so we’ve watched a documentary on the Costa cruise that fell over in Italy and now watching a movie on kittens…it’s a tough life. Played a game of RTTA where I finally beat her, and we have some Yatzhee and Forbidden Island scheduled last tonight.

Tomorrow is up in the air…we have planned a movie tour, and then a few different ideas depending on what the weather is like. We’ll see how it goes…

From Honokaa to Kona again.

We woke up to a lovely breakfast that had been made for us by our host. Banana pancakes, eggs, passion fruit, tea and coffee. Another conversation and we jetted out of there to go horseback riding in Waipio Valley.

This valley has a 1000 foot drop, over 3/4s of a mile. There are very clear signs at the top telling you that you must have 4×4 to go down (or rather…back up…) and that AWD is not enough. Driving down was fine…I still don’t understand how that white tour van managed to drive back up. The Valley itself has about 50 residents, who live without outside electricity, phone lines, tv, etc. I’m told they are mostly people who want to live “off the land”, some hippies, a few Veterans. Our taxi driver from the other day told us to be careful – people go in and they don’t come out. Our guidebook tells us to be wary of angry residents.

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After having gone through the area, I think that if you had the right maps, that it would be a decent place to go hiking. We saw numerous people hiking down the road and some people wandering around the trails we were on.

imageWe took the road north, across the top of the extinct volcano Kohala, one of 5 that erupted to create the Big Island in the first place. A nice drive across a mountain. Something that I thought of – this isn’t a drive “through the mountains”, because there is really only the one mountain, and it slopes downward slowly but steadily. Again with the bright green meadows

imageWe reached the tip of the Big Island and looked out over the ocean.

Driving back down the tip on the west side was quite different. Here you can see quite clearly which is the dry, desert side, and which is the rainforest side. Back to black lava rocks piled up in rough formations, dried out grasses and very few plants at all. Interesting – on the side of the highway here, hundreds of people have stopped and picked up little white stones and graphitti’d messages such as R+G, Tupak, etc.

We arrived in Kailua-Kona and had to pull a tight left on a 45 mph highway. Scary. Drove around the north side of Kona for a bit trying to find our place and managed to…its the one without the address. “Dolphin View” the ad says, but we’re pretty far away from the ocean here. Having said that, so far I like the place. Our own bedroom and washroom. An ocean view and you can hear the waves and seagulls still. I found it incredibly peaceful after our long drive from Honokaa.

Breakfast this morning was english muffins and some array of fruit from the nearby trees. It’s Miranda’s birthday today and we’re going up Mauna Kea to stargaze and take in the sunset tonight!

From Hilo to Honokaa

We left Hilo (thankfully) and drove north on the 19 highway towards Waimea and Honokaa. This is the wet side of the island, Hilo averages the most rainfall of any city in the USA, and consequently there is a lot of water and a lot of it falls.

We found a couple notable waterfalls from our guidebook (remind me to write about the guidebook later) and boy howdy, did that water fall. This is Akaka Falls, with a drop of about 410 feet. There is a concrete path that loops around it and another smaller fall and it’s pretty damn cool.

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This was our first place-of-residence where we would meet the owner, all the others we had walked in with a key hidden somewhere. We drove back and forth numerous times trying to find the place, as the street numbers were going in the wrong direction. Went back to town for gas and directions, and it turns out that we needed to go past where it looked like the town ended and look for a pineapple sign.

Found the place and walked in, and our host was sitting in the living room as we opened the front screen door. She offered us tea and coffee, which was nice, and we settled in with some conversation.

That night, Miranda and I spent the evening playing some Agricola and chasing the house cat.

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The place was called the Waipio Wayside. Nice place. LOTS of frogs at night. It was so bad that Miranda had to turn on a white noise generator on her phone, and I had to sleep with earplugs. Not a great sleep. In a smaller double bed. I think we’ve both been really tired recently because of bad sleep, and this didn’t help. But it was a decent place, with a pleasant host and breakfast made for us in the morning.

However, I was thankful when we left in the morning. Over breakfast and at night, certain things had been said that caused me to not really want to converse anymore with this lady. Nothing really bad, but the sort of thing where I just wanted to be quiet for a while. Horse riding in the morning in Waipio Valley provided that quiet time!

Heading to Hilo

We started the day by deciding to visit a winery in Volcano. As Miranda texted that day – ” I’m at a winery by 11 am, it’s a pretty good day.”

We had an 8 wine tasting and bought a couple bottles of wine and the ladies serving were fun and obviously loved their job. They had this honey/tea infusion wine that I was certain I was going to love… but it needed milk. πŸ˜›

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Went for a drive for the rest of the afternoon. Drove down to the County labs viewing spot only to find that it didn’t open until 3. Drove up the coast and took a few photos of some intense waves.

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Found a farmer’s market just outside of Pahoa and wandered around. Lots of neat things to see, and some great eats. Lots of hippies.

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More driving. Our guidebook claims that Sunday isn’t a great day to visit these beaches, as the locals aren’t as friendly, so we just drove by with the occasional stop.

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The County lava viewing area opened and we went for another short hike.

The lava in this area flowed through in 1990 and covered a community called Kalapana. You can still see houses standing, and we’re told that people still live here. Hard to imagine. As Miranda said ” oh yeah, that’s where Suzies house used to be”… Rough.

The guards here wouldn’t let us walk past a certain point, which was to far away to see much of anything. As we arrived we saw a couple walking towards us from outside the viewing area. When we asked about that, the guard said that these people had now received a $5,000 fine per person. Don’t screw with the County.

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Drove to Hilo. Here’s our hotel. No kitchen is weird. And it turns out that the airport is… Right there. And crying babies in the room over.

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imageToday we have a helicopter tour of a volcano. Hopefully we see some lava…

Writing this at breakfast, so now I’m caught up again!

Friday!

We started Friday early – lots to get done and a hard deadline in the middle.

The four of us had a desire to go surfing one more time so we found the first van we could find on the beach, grabbed 2 boards and Sean and I went out while the two girls sat on the beachish area and watched and took photos. We had less success than the day we took the lessons, but it was great to get out and try again. Would do it again!

Got some more shave ice, gathered our things together, sat by the pool and then by the road waiting for the shuttle to take Miranda and I to the airport. It was a tiny tiny little plane with a single propeller, and I took a few aerial photos.

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imageimagePicked up a Nissan Ultima and started our 3-ish hour drive to Volcano, HI.

imageimageDrove into Volcano just as it was getting darker. This town is a little weird…the side of it with our place on it is 14 streets, by 10ish streets in a perfect grid, with 1 (maybe two) houses per lot with a lot of jungle trees on all sides. It’s very claustrophobic. And when driving in the dark, it’s a little creepy.

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imageWe found some food at the “best restaurant on the island” (according to our guidebook) and it was great food at the Kileaua Lodge and Restaurant. We had breakfast there as well, and the dinner leftovers for dinner the next night.

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Saturday was very exciting with lots of awesome mountain and lava rock photos to come!

Driving!

Thursday we had decided to not do a third day of diving, and instead to do a lot of driving. We made pancakes and bacon and eggs and then took off to drive “the nub” of Maui, which is the north west section of the island. Miranda and I had previously tried to do this, but got as far as Lahaina (which isn’t that far around).

This is a gorgeous drive, with only a few minor issues. A narrow, one lane road runs for about 9 miles of it, with a small town in the middle. Scary miles. Rain was an issue for a bit, but we got over it. The town in the middle is hilarious, with a number of small huts and houses selling food and/or random art and jewelry, etc.

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We came out, grabbed some quick food at the Maui Tacos in the mall (surprisingly good) and then drove off to see the top of Haleakala, at 10,000 foot elevation.

It didn’t work out. Clouds at the top! And seriously cold up there.

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On the way down, the clouds cleared a bit and we got some awesome views!

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We came back down and drank some more. Sean and I almost managed to finish off the 60oz bottle of rum that we bought earlier that week. πŸ™‚