Oh no, suddenly it was our last full day! We were getting a little burned out on sleeping in a double bed (as opposed to the queen size we’re used to), not really having a kitchen, and being more and more alienated by the Resort. But we were still having a fine time and were sad that we were reaching the end. What should we do on our last day?
One thing I had put on the prioritized list we made of things to do in Hawaiʻi was to drive up Mauna Kea. We went back and forth about that a few times since then. None of us are great at altitude and the mountain is 14,000 feet, way higher than we’d ever been before. Sarah and I had been up over 10K feet twice and Dave had once, and I remember feeling dizzy and short on breath even at that elevation. But we loved the mountains on Hawaiʻi and were sorely tempted to give it a shot. A beach day on our last day would have meant trying to deal with wet and sandy stuff in our luggage, and so was not appealing.
The Maunakea Visitor Information Center [sic] is on the mountainside at 9000 feet. So we decided to go for that and see if we then felt inclined to go farther up. And it seems strange, but we had seen such great stuff just driving around the island that we were psyched for another road trip up the Saddle Road to see what we could see (the other side of the mountain??).
Another factor was that we love eating big breakfasts on vacation. And as we had found out, the only breakfast place anywhere in the area charged outrageous prices, and we had skimped on breakfast because of that. But we decided to go for it one more time, even at the unbelievable price of $40/person. Sarah claimed that she was going to eat three omelets.
Did a little bit of prep for the day, but then walked on down to Big Island Breakfast and got in line. They do have a great omelet station, where you select what you want in your omelet from lots of choices, put it all on a plate, and present it to the cook, who had 5 hotplates going and was custom-cooking those omelets like a pro. In fact, he was a pro and admitted to Sarah later that he practiced this at home. The omelets were made with farm-grown eggs (aren’t all eggs … well, never mind). And they also had piles of bacon and sausage, quite a variety of fresh fruit (we went for papaya and pineapple), lots of fresh pastries, juices, and all the other stuff you might eat for breakfast, including sugary cereals for the keiki. And they brought us an acceptable pot of coffee.
Sarah could only fit two omelets, and Dave and I tried hard ourselves, but we were pretty stuffed. And that was a good reason not to immediately go for a long hike. We needed time to digest! There were several big guys sitting at tables who seemed to be making the most of the breakfast. They weren’t about to go on long hikes either and might be there all morning.
Back in the room we got everything together for one last Hawaiʻi expedition, made it down the Museum Walkway again (we would not miss this), filled our flotilla of bottles at the water station, and went down to the lot to get Hector fired up. One more time, we rocketed up the Waikoloa Road (saying good morning to the Mercedes abandoned near the top), traversed over to Inouye Highway, and blasted up the mountainside. And when we got to the fork for the Mauna Kea Road, we took it!
The road, which is soon over the crest coming from the West, turned a lot narrower and a bit steeper very quickly. And it increased steadily in pitch over the next few miles. It also started switching back and forth until it was doing it pretty violently. Again, it’s a good thing I’m not a nervous driver because there were several places where we were hanging out over space and could have easily crashed down the mountainside if we had strayed from the road.
The landscape was pretty much brown dirt (if not black lava) with a few scattered tufts of grass at the top of the Saddle Road (@6600 feet), and we stayed in that climate zone as we climbed up to the Maunakea Visitor Information Center (also known as the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy Visitor Information Station, named after Ellison Onizuka, a Hawaiʻian who died in the Challenger disaster in 1986). The parking lot was under construction and so only a few spots were open, and they were all full! I hovered in the lot for the next available space (which opened up soon) while Sarah and Dave went in, and then I joined them. This isn’t really much of an “information center,” really it’s just a small gift shop (selling mostly sweatshirts and warm hats to tourists not prepared for a mountain climate) with a few displays about the telescopes and lots of displays on the dangers of driving up to the top without 4-wheel drive.
They do have a short trail through their Silver Sword preserve, an endemic, dramatic plant found on that mountain. This was a great opportunity for us to stretch our legs, breathe deeply, and see how the altitude was affecting us.
We were a little disappointed that we had climbed up the mountain and really could not see much. It was another beautiful day with fast-moving clouds, but the Visitor Information Center is in a fold on the mountainside surrounded by cinder cones, and so you could not see out to the ocean as we had hoped, or even to the other mountains.
We realized after a while that we would be ok. Definitely a bit of dizziness at first, but after some concentration on taking full breaths and some hiking around through their preserve on pretty level ground, we were ready for more. But was there more? Why couldn’t we hike here?
Across the road from the Information Center there was a guardrail, but those sure looked suspiciously like trails behind that. We asked, and the woman said that of course she would not stop us from going over there, though it was not up to her to give us information about it. Maybe a liability thing? Anyway, we went over there and read a few signs and realized it was all state land and we could do what we wanted on it (including hunting, camping, and dirt-biking) as long as we went by a few back-country rules (the waitress at Big Island Brewhaus had told us gleefully about a friend of hers who went dirt-biking on Mauna Kea and got his face ripped off when he crashed … they put it back).
So all right, we decided to go not for a long hike, but to try to get to somewhere where we could see out better. We still weren’t feeling overly nimble or energetic because of the lack of oxygen, but we toured around some and then climbed halfway up one of the biggest cinder cones. I still have dust on my boots from that walk on Mauna Kea … Sarah’s camera says we got up very close to 10,000 feet.
And though we didn’t really get the panoramic and ocean views we were hoping for, we sure could see a long way out there when we got a bit higher. The dominant feature was of course Mauna Loa, the other mountain. It’s strange that it looked even bigger when we were also up high, just incredibly massive. As usual, there was a very strong wind blowing from the Northeast (so strong I took my hat off so it wouldn’t blow away), and the same wind was happening over on Mauna Loa apparently. But the massive peak split it in two and set it swirling, and it became clouds that then descended onto its little brother, Hualālai. This had apparently been going on for a long, long time and there was nothing Hualālai could do about it, it was just stuck in Mauna Loa’s jetstream.
We had meandered slowly and it was probably about 90 minutes later when we got back. We were all decided at that point that we weren’t going to drive up any further. The displays at the information center convinced us that our car might not be up to it, and we’d been having a tough enough time at 10,000 feet, we hated to think what 14,000 would be like.
So after filling up on water at the drinking fountain, we got back in the car and started the long descent. Sad to say goodbye to the mountains, but we had a long way to go before our last goodbyes tomorrow. Our plan was to detour on to the old Saddle Road at the split and then to continue into Waimea, where we could have a late lunch at the Big Island Brewhaus.
It used to be that the Saddle Road had a reputation for accidents, dangerous switchbacks and sight lines, and hard driving conditions. But when the new Saddle Road (Inouye Highway) was completed, it became routine to traverse the Island that way. When we branched off onto the old Saddle Road we found out what they were talking about! The road dropped down very sharply, not well-graded at all, and soon it was hugging the transition line between the desert, Wyoming-like country on the left with lots of bleak dirt/rock and scattered clumps of plants, and the lusher ranch country on the right, extending up the lower slopes of Mauna Kea and later the slopes of Kohala. As often happened during the trip, it suddenly started raining, the clouds closed us in, and visibility dropped, though it was still bright up above.
Well, we made it to Waimea anyway, up on its shoulder of Kohala, and there was a place in the Brewhaus parking lot for us. They were pretty full again, even in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday, but we got a nice table outside in the half-sun and half-shade of their patio, and got some more of their great beers and one last great seafood meal. Our waitress from the night before greeted us merrily, she was wearing a Red Sox hat (only one I saw on the trip)! And speaking of Boston sports, we checked out the Bruins and they had swept their series with Carolina, winning the last game 4-0!
Oh well, one more fond farewell when we finally finished up there (I had bought a hat from them the day before). If we had to settle anywhere on the Big Island, it would probably be up in Kohala or the Hāmākua coast, and we would definitely be regulars at the Big Island Brewhaus.
We wanted to go down a road we hadn’t been on before and so turned to the right in downtown Waimea and then stayed left at the fork down the Kawaihae Road, which dropped pretty precipitously itself, gave us some last beautiful views of the Pacific off Kohala, and then spat us out on the coast, just about where we had started our explorations on Saturday at Puʻukoholā Heiau.
From there we turned left on Queen K Highway and headed back to the Resort area. Didn’t go in there quite yet though, we turned West again up Waikoloa Drive so we could go back to Waikoloa Village to gas up in preparation for returning the car, and get some granola bars for backup for the plane ride the next day.
Then one last time trying to get into the Hilton Waikoloa parking lot, finding a space, and dragging everything up into the lobby through the oppressive heat. Another long walk to the Ocean Tower. Dave went directly back to the room while Sarah and I took a short detour into the grand Ocean Tower lobby to look around. We hadn’t done that before. They have a very nice manicured lawn beyond it and areas for group functions. We shuddered to think how insanely busy the whole place must get at full operating capacity.
We had wandered around the upper floors of the Ocean Tower a few days before, Dave and I had skulked through the far reaches around the pool to the South, and we had pretty much explored all of the Resort, including the convention space on the lower floors. One thing we hadn’t inspected was the lobby of the Palace Tower, but that might have been too much. And Sarah hadn’t been on the boat! But if we never see that Resort again, I won’t miss it a bit.
Well anyway, got back to the room and started the huge job of packing for our return journey. Actually, it went more smoothly than we’d expected. We’d done a great job of managing foodstuffs, etc. so we were just about out of everything. We’d been kind of forced to be tidy about storing dirty clothes vs. still-clean clothes because of the lack of bureau space, and this meant we could pretty much empty the drawers right into the suitcase. We’d stored a lot of stuff in the closet too, such as the snorkeling gear and extra towels, but that went on top and we were done! What remained we would put in our carry-on packs the next day.
So one last sunset on the balcony, and then it was time for dinner. Again, our choices were pretty limited but we figured we’d go back to the Tropics Ale House. It couldn’t be worse than it had been on Saturday night! And in a flash of brilliance, we realized this meant we could bring the full suitcases out to the car now and not have to do it in the morning.
Of course, the one time the tram might have come in handy, it was nowhere in sight. And so we wheeled our big suitcases all the way back down the Museum Walkway, which was a fitting rite of farewell. I’m sure I’m going to have nightmares about walking that path over and over and over. Though it had some interesting objets d’art in it, enough was enough.
One last stroll through the neighborhood over to the Tropics Ale House, and the same waitress we had had Saturday was really glad to see us back, and really glad to tell us that all their beers were now on. So this was a nice little way to wrap up that sub-plot. Had a decent last Big Island meal there … I got a salad since I’d been eating so much fish lately.
And when we got back to the Hilton Waikoloa, the full moon was burning in the sky, and the boat was there! Sarah had not yet been on the silly little boat they ran up and down the Resort in parallel to the tram, and we couldn’t pass up this opportunity. It’s a change, though as mentioned, it isn’t really a nautical adventure.
Back to the Boat Landing in the Ocean Tower and up to the room one last time. It was getting pretty late by then and we knew we’d have to get up earlier than we had been the next morning, so it wasn’t long before bedtime.
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