Old Kona Airport and The Hard Sell

Monday May 13

When we got in the night before, our message light had been blinking.  I checked it and it was Hank at the Hilton Grand Vacations concierge desk telling me we’d missed our presentation!  The story was that part of the deal that allowed us to get the great price for the Resort that we did, was that Sarah and I would have to sit through a 2-hour sales presentation.  OK, we could do that.  After much confusion, this was scheduled for Monday afternoon.  But at the last minute they’d apparently changed it to Sunday afternoon at the same time and we’d not noticed that change (even when we checked in, the guy at the desk had told us “Monday” … oh well).  They emailed me too about us being delinquent and possibly forfeiting our rate, and I replied before going to bed.

And then the phone rang at 7:10AM and it was them again, wanting to reschedule us.  It was just a big mixup.  They woke Dave from a sound sleep, but I was just as glad to get this rescheduled early so we could plan the day.  We set it up for 1:30 that afternoon.

So that meant we could do a Kohala or Kona beach in the morning, get back in time to shower the salt and sand off and eat lunch, and then we two would head on over while Dave chilled.  So what beach?

The problem is that we’re not beach people.  The Kohala coast has several beaches that are consistently listed among the best in the world.  But the rating of “best” may mean it’s not for us.  It generally means lots of open sand sloping gently into the water and pretty calm seas for swimming, or if there are waves, they’re gentle and fit for boogie-boarding.  We like beaches with places to sit in the shade and interesting swimming, though we were aware that these beaches fronted on, and were exposed to, the wide Pacific.  And you could see Japan out there (or a sequence of tsunamis) if you looked hard enough.

We also wanted a beach where you could snorkel, and we’d brought masks, fins, and snorkels, seeing that rental prices were outrageous.  But when a beach was rated “good for snorkeling” they meant “good” for people who were experienced snorkelers and wanted to spend the day doing it.  We just wanted to get our feet wet, figuratively.

Anyway, what appealed to me on reading about beaches was the Old Kona Airport, about 25 miles South of our Resort on the South Kona coast.  Believe it or not, this was the Old Kona Airport … but it was not big enough for modern jet-liners and so was closed in 1970.  It’s now a State Recreation Area and still features the old runway.  It fronts on the beach and the descriptions of it indicated that this might be the beach for us.  And it was, kind of.

Did our morning routine of taking turns in the bathroom and shower and Sarah making us each a cup of coffee (by making hot water in the little room coffee maker and using the press she’d brought with the coffee we picked up Saturday).  Then we packed up all our snorkeling and beach gear, slathered on the sunscreen, and we were out of there, on another hot morning trek down the Museum Walkway.  On a few occasions (can’t remember if we did it that morning), we exited the walkway and went cross-country, over the meandering Resort paths.  This was a little more direct, but still painfully, ridiculously inconvenient.  And this meant we were exposed to the hot sun and then had to climb their huge stairway at the end of it to get up to the lobby and out of the Resort.  I think they really want you to stay there and spend more money.

Finally made it to the car, though Dave threatened to fall on a lady in a wheelchair.  A comedy routine we were forced to go through every morning was getting through the gate out of the parking lot.  You were supposed to insert your room key into the slot and remove it quickly, and the gate would lift open for you.  At least, that’s what the sign said.  A couple of times we did it in one shot, but sometimes it took more sticking the card in and pulling it out and then waiting for the mechanism to work.  Our record was 9 tries.  And everyone else entering and leaving went through the same thing!  Sometimes this built up quite a line of impatient people who just wanted to get the fuck out of there and groaned at every rejection by the gate.

Speaking of getting out of there, it’s a painfully long drive out to the highway past 25 MPH signs and lots of stop signs and speed bumps.  This main route out to the South took us past the incredibly tony Queen’s Marketplace, and they were apparently thinking that that’s where we really wanted to go.  They had lots of canted speed bumps, trying to steer us in there.  It wasn’t until a bit later that we discovered “Maintenance Road,” a much quicker way out of the oppressive Resort complex.

Turned onto Queen K Highway (route 19) and motored on down past the (new) Kona Airport and into the town of Kailua-Kona.  It was another beautiful blue day with a cloud cover created by Mauna Loa cloaking the upper slopes and top of Hualālai.  Turned down the road past another tony mall towards the old airport, past the Little League fields, and then there we were in an old and rusty State Park, motoring a few hundred yards down the old runway to the end of the beach that was supposed to have good snorkeling.

BUT … it didn’t take us long to realize there would be no snorkeling that morning.  The tide was out, and the very stiff wind was onshore, which is a bit unusual for the leeward side (the National Weather Service called it an “inverse trade wind”).  The breakers were crashing in over the lava and coral, with enough force that even a hundred yards after they first smashed into the rock, by the time the water got to the tide pools and hollows between huge lava boulders in front of us, it was still gushing in with a force that would knock you over.  We maybe could have gone to the other end of the beach and been faced with a few less rocks, but even so the swimming would not have been safe.

So we were a little disappointed, but not really!  It was so, so beautiful.  Where the waves broke they caught the sun and lit up into a rainbow of turquoise, white, blue, and green.  The black rocks were impossibly jagged and the sand was coarse and shifted incredibly with every wave.  As was apparent often, we realized how young and ephemeral this landscape was.  The wind was strong and steady, howling so much we had a hard time hearing anything but the crashing of the waves.  There was shade from a variety of funny little trees, and there were very few people.  At our end of the beach we saw three in the whole time we were there, one walking three funny dogs.

We took turns doing a little wading, wearing water shoes.  I was perhaps most daring, finding a spot between several boulders where the water was sometimes just up to my knees, but sometimes up to my shoulders when a breaker overflowed the rocks between me and the sea.  I stood sideways to the incoming waves, and with many of them I had to counter with a solid shoulder check when they burst into my little cove, or else they would have knocked me off my feet.  As I said, the sand was constantly shifting and a couple of times I did lose my footing, and had to hurry to get back in position for the next wave.  The water was salty, warm, and clean.  But after a bit I figured I’d pressed my luck enough and got back out.  All it would have taken was one really huge wave to smash me onto the rocks, which would not have been fun.

We all had a good amount of sunscreen on, but when we were in the sun we could feel our skin crisping.  We hung out in the shade and just watched the waves, breaking along down the coast to the South.  And we took turns exploring around the funky cove and the small rocky areas behind it, where there were some native burial plots.

This was a grand time, but after a while we knew we had to get back.  No idea how long we would have stayed there otherwise.  We walked over to the bathhouse near where we had parked and tried to wash the sand and salt off in their outside showers, then got back in the car and headed down the runway and then back up the coast to Kohala.  Not too long a drive up to the Resort, taking note of a gas station and store we might stop at the next day.

Back to the room, had a beer or two and a PB&J sandwich (we had gotten guava jelly instead of our normal apple … none of that to be found in the store).  And then Sarah and I headed back up the blessed Museum Walkway to the car so we could drive up to King’s Land for the sales presentation.  Got there a bit early and had time to hang at their poolside bar for a bit and have another beer.  This was a bit more like the kind of Resort we like, but just a bit.  And then…

Well, this was quite a sales presentation and it seemed to go on for a couple of weeks, not just a couple of hours, even though we tried to enjoy it.  We’d thought it would be a bunch of people in a room listening to a presentation, and then they’d load us onto a bus and take us around the Resort to show us the golf courses.  And we knew we weren’t going to sign or buy anything.  But they persisted.

We were greeted by Nicholas, a 20-something tall blonde guy who was very good at this, and he made it personal.  We enjoyed talking to him about what we had liked so far about the trip and what our situation in life was r.e. travel.  And then he very skillfully turned this around and used all of the information we’d given him (and often our very words) to try to convince us to subscribe to a “points” program with Hilton Grand Vacations.  This would allow us to book Hilton properties all over the world and would also enable us to book unused inventory for quick, cheap vacations.

The issue was that our idea of a vacation (go places and drive around and see things and stay in cheap hotels because we wouldn’t be spending much time in the room) was antithetical to their idea of what people wanted in a vacation: luxury, a beautiful room in a Resort, going to one place and staying there.  Nicholas took us to see one of their suites, which was nice.  Sarah had a good question for him, “What if we don’t like the artwork?”  This exposed the fallacy that they touted this as an “equity” arrangement, but actually all we would own would be the right to stay in one of these places, not the actual place.  This was not the kind of equity we would pay money for.

They brought us back into the little room and then the closer, Maria, came in and really turned up the hard sell.  It was only when I had the following exchange with her that she realized she was wasting her time.

• Me: The only way I would buy a deal like this is if a friend of mine said he recommended it.
• Maria: Do you have any friends who are Hilton Grand Vacation members?
• Me: No.
• Maria: Then that could never happen.  How about if I get you recommendations from people who are members?
• Me: I wouldn’t believe them, they don’t know me.
• Maria: OK, we’re done here!

And then they ushered us into another big room and told us that somebody would be by soon to give us the prizes we had won (or something like that).  What they meant by “prizes” was a certificate for a bunch of Hilton Honors Points and one for a refund for a Hilton Honors stay.  This was all part of the package we’d purchased, but a check on my phone showed that we’d already been there well over two hours and I was getting impatient.

So, as Sarah says, I started to act like a distracted toddler, which seemed to work.  I wasn’t going to just sit patiently at that desk, I got up and tried all the doors in the room, logged onto the computer they had set up over in a corner, got cups of water from their machine, and listened in on other people’s conversations.  What they wanted to do by making us sit and wait was soften us up for one last hard sell.  They wanted Sarah or me to turn to the other and say, “You know honey, we really do deserve a spot in paradise, let’s reconsider this!”  Wasn’t happening.

I was just about to start rearranging the furniture (I had sketched out mentally how to do it), when finally a person showed up and gave us our certificates.  I think they’d realized that the best thing for their operation was to get odd ducks like us out of there as soon as possible.  Yeah, we could have told them that.  We bid them a fond adieu, and wasted no time getting back to the Ocean Tower.  And there was still plenty of time left in the afternoon!

We had no energy to go anywhere else though (we’d already done the long walk to the car twice that day).  Dave had had time to prowl around most of the Resort while we were gone.  And we had been stymied that morning in giving our snorkeling gear a run.  And so we decided to try it out in the Resort’s lagoon.

As I say, most of the people in the Resort did not leave the environs.  And the designers had carved an artificial lagoon into the middle of the campus, letting out into the little cove they fronted on, that suddenly became the Pacific.  So the lagoon was basically part of the sea, but we soon discovered that it was also fed by several outlets of fresh water … you could see and feel the cold, fresh water sitting over the warmer salt water.  I’m sure that without the influx of fresh water, forcing the lagoon to flow outwards to the cove, it soon would have gotten a lot dirtier and cloudier than it was.  Even so, it was pretty dirty, mostly shallow, and not really a good place to swim or snorkel.  But we gave it a good shot and had a grand time.

Sarah pretty quickly soured on snorkeling … she could not really fit the mouthpiece snugly into her mouth.  Dave and I got the new gear working pretty quickly (including the underwater camera), and explored the lagoon.  I even went outside it a bit, but this was not much fun either, since everything was so shallow and the waves were washing in and out, forcing me to struggle to stay where it was barely deep enough to swim.

There were a good number of fish in the lagoon, they were fun to see and follow.  There were also several green sea turtles there, oblivious to the fact that they’re endangered.  We were supposed to stay clear of them and not bother them, but they wanted to get close enough to us to see if we had any tasty algae for them.  And jeez, in that lagoon we could feel the algae growing on us.  Soon we were done.  That was a fun thing to say you’d done, though we don’t plan to do it again any time soon.

We walked further South, into the depths of the Resort, and saw their dolphin pool.  You have to think that those cetaceans weren’t having a lot of fun, being locked into that little pool.  Sarah then headed back to the room with the gear, but Dave and I took a quick tour around the rest of the Resort.  We saw their other huge pool, that had what looked like a better slide, a pool volleyball court, and was spanned by a rope bridge.  Might be worth trying it out if we had time.  We also saw the Hilton Waikoloa luau court (which looked pretty gruesome), and their flamingo and tortoise enclosures, which were a little jarring.

And then we were at the beginning of the boat canal and there was the boat, just boarding!  We weren’t about to miss this opportunity and we climbed on board, just like clueless tourists.  It was kind of fun, even though this wasn’t like a real boat ride; the boat is on a track and the skipper’s duties were basically to turn the propulsion on or off, and to help people on or off when we stopped at a dock.  Dave and I planned that one of us would distract or block the skipper when he was on a dock, and the other would throw off the hawser and gun it, and then we could take the boat into the open ocean.  But this was just a pipe dream.

Finally landed at the other end of the canal, the Boat Landing Grill, which had opened for lunch but seemed totally unappealing.  We went upstairs and showered off the slime and the salt, and then had to sit out on the balcony, watch the sunset, and think about what *did* seem appealing for dinner.  Boy, this was a tough life, and by that point we were entirely on vacation time.

As I say, we had had it with traveling anywhere that day, and so our choices were limited to the in-Resort options.  They have an Italian restaurant in the middle of the Museum Walkway, but we’d checked out their prices and they were outrageous, probably for not-the-finest food either.  We didn’t want to go back all the way to the other end of the Resort for their other outrageously high-priced restaurant.  And so we settled on going back to the Kona Tap Room, where we’d been Friday night.

And we had a fine time there!  We’d missed their karaoke night on Sunday (thank Dog), and they had two guys doing “Hawaiian Music,” which was mostly pop tunes with a bit of island swing.  I loved their cover of “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone,” and they did a few more fun numbers  And we were seated on the quiet back patio and had a few more Kona Brewing Company beers that couldn’t be beat.  The kitchen was a little more efficient than it had been on Friday.  I had the brisket quesadilla and it wasn’t half bad.

Then back to the room and soon to bed, it would be another huge day tomorrow.

Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park

 Sunday May 12

Got out of bed on Sunday and though I’d had some anxiety dreams and some sleepless bouts, I was very excited.  This would be the day I’d see the beginnings of geology!  And I’d get to drive over the Saddle Road.

Here’s a description of what went on every morning we were there, and probably many other mornings too:

• At about 4:55 there’s a sudden, loud cacophony of birds, perhaps prompted by the first brightening of dawn.  You could set your watch by this.  The birds go crazy for about 10 minutes and then calm back down.
• Sprinklers inside the Resort all go off at about 5:00, as if set off by the birds.  I can’t believe no one complains about this, because it’s pretty loud.  It’s as if all of your neighbors in the cheap apartment block jumped into their showers at once, but it only lasts for 15 minutes or so.
• At about 6:00 the real sunrise occurs and the birds go nuts about this.  The day has started and they’ve been waiting all night to pursue their lines of conversation about the choicest spots or mates.
• Soon after that the sun has risen to the point where it starts burning through the curtains.  Luckily, we were not on the East side of the complex and so had some time before the sun cleared the mountains and shone on us.

Time to wake up, do exercises, and eat some yogurt and granola on the balcony, while fending off the mynas and sparrows … which was a good morning routine.  But then it was time to get ready for the day.  Sarah was making coffee in the room, but we were desperately low on cups, so I went down to the coffee shop in the Ocean Tower and got a black iced … for $6.01 (and they gave me back 99 cents in change, come on)!  At least I got to keep the cup, and we made good use of it over the next few days.

As I mentioned, we had brought clothes for a variety of situations.  We had the benefit of a local, timely forecast that morning though, and the wildly different weather possibilities we had prepared for were narrowed down.  So we didn’t have to over-pack, but each of us still brought along sweatshirts, slickers, boots and sandals (some wore one, some the other), hats, and sunglasses, as well as the few PB&B sandwiches we had left,+ some bananas, and lots of water bottles.

We had found a bottle-filling station with good water near the front lobby, and our routine involved stopping there each morning when we finally achieved the end of the Dog-blessed Museum Walkway.  We would fill up all of our bottles, giving way once in a while to less serious folks who just needed a top-off.  They sometimes looked at us and all our bottles strangely, even though we were saving the Earth.

So we were off for the sky and the East and the volcanoes!  Not too early but not too late.  Escaping the event horizon of Waikoloa Drive can be tough, but we were out of there at last (avoiding many mynas on the road with death wishes … Sarah and Dave eventually forbade me from steering around them), rocketing up the Waikoloa Road.  Then right on 19, and then after 3 miles left on Daniel K. Inouye Turnpike (a.k.a. the New Saddle Road) up into the Hawaiʻi-sphere.

The speed limit was up to 60 here and I pushed it a bit, as did some of the few other cars.  Some lagged behind on the mountainside, but I kept the hammer down and the Elantra responded very well.  I should mention that it had lane detection alerts, and though we tried to turn this feature off it persisted in beeping at me when I would get near a white line, which sometimes I needed to do to save time.  The old Saddle Road came in on the left and then sooner than we expected, the speed limit dropped to 45 and the Pōhakuloa Training Area appeared on our right (acknowledged with a double bird), then the Mauna Kea recreation area appeared on our left, and then we crested the saddle at 6632 feet.

We kept bombing over the crest (the speed limit had gone back up to 60), and then heading down and down and down.  The surrounding landscape changed subtly.  On the way uphill we had been on the leeward side of the mountains and it was an arid landscape with lots of startlingly steep mounds of dirt (these were pu'u, volcanic hills, some of which were kīpuka) and random tufts of grass.  On the windward side there were fields of lava (pāhoehoe alternated with ʻaʻā) smooth , weathered slopes headed down towards the sea, and sudden bright patches of red succulents.  And the dirt was a darker, damper color.

Rain started up of course, orographic showers don’t you know; Hilo is one of the rainiest cites in the world and we were experiencing it as we hurtled down the Saddle Road and route 200 turned into route 2000.  You need to take a right near the end of it in a suburban neighborhood and then jog over on Komohana Street to get down to route 11, this section’s part of the Hawaiian Belt Road.  This route avoids downtown and then you can start back up the long uphill trek towards Volcano.  And that’s what we did, gaping at the sudden McDonalds, Taco Bells and auto parts stores (this was America after all) while realizing that they had much better gas prices over on this side of the Island.

But soon we were out of town and, as I say, on another long uphill climb, this time ascending the side of Kīlauea.  After a long trip (actually just about 2 hours from the Resort) we passed the town of Volcano and finally pulled into Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.  We were totally psyched and had the Senior Lifetime Pass in its holder on our rear-view.  The woman at the gate mentioned that we did not have to display the pass, but checked my ID with the seriousness the occasion called for.  I love National Parks, and she realized what an occasion this was for us.  People at Minute Man National Historical Park have told me, barely containing their excitement, “I’ve *always* wanted to visit this Park and I’m finally here!”  That’s the way we felt, and I can imagine the little empathic thrill for the NPS employee.

Oh boy, this was as exciting and as underwhelming as you might imagine.  When you get to the edge of the Grand Canyon or enter Yosemite you get an incredible rush.  But that wasn’t the story here; there’s no grand entrance and as with many Parks, this one has to grow on you a bit.  And that was fine with us, we were ready for that.  We looked around some in the crowded Visitor Center (it was shoulder season, but it was Sunday … and it was Mother’s Day, as it had been when we visited Yosemite in 2012), and I stood in line to talk to a Ranger.  When you go to a NPS site, always talk to a Ranger first, you’ll be glad you did.

Actually, it was a volunteer, but that’s ok.  Signs all over the VC announced that there was no lava flowing anywhere on the Island.  This was incredibly disappointing to many people, and they had a hard time understanding that.  Why call it “Volcanoes Park” if we can’t jump into one?  The truth of the moment was that there had been an eruption in the East Rift Zone of Kīlauea in 2018, and that a year later the Park was still limiting access to make sure people were safe, and the lava was still at an ebb.  The earthquakes and aftershocks associated with the eruption had made many parts of the Park unstable, and they weren’t letting people go there.  This was disappointing too, but we didn’t want to get a load of rock on our heads or be swallowed up in a sudden rift, and so were ok with it.  What we wanted was to get out and see what we could, we were sure it would be fantastic.  And it was.

I had had my mind set on the Kīlauea Iki Trail, but enough of that was closed (as was Thurston Lava Tube) so you couldn’t do it as a loop.  I asked the volunteer for an alternative and he very skillfully suggested a hike of about that length, encompassing what could be safely visited around Kīlauea Caldera at that time.  So that’s what we did!  He also pointed out a few places we might want to stop/hike at, further down Chain of Craters Road when I told him we planned to go down there next.

OK, we put on our packs, tightened our belts, and went for it.  And as at every National Park I’ve visited, the beauty took over very quickly.  We left the busy VC area, and were soon on the trail with a few other scattered groups, seeing wonders.  And we sure smelled them at the first wonder, the Sulphur Banks area.  The ground all around the caldera lets off steam, the result of the hot ground boiling the water that seeps down into the rifts.  At Sulphur Banks this steam is mixed with volcanic gasses, which here stink of sulphur and so are pretty easily identifiable.  In other places the volcanic gasses are concentrated enough to become a real danger to oxygen-breathers but here, as with gas from your stove, they’re marked by their odor. The gasses have stained the exposed banks into fantastic colors and sure were stinky.

Farther down the trail, the Earth was younger and the more shallow rifts in it collected rainwater (a fine mist had started, it was an overcast morning on the mountainside, though bright) and spewed it back out as spouts and clouds of steam.  As mentioned, we were at a loss to identify almost all of the bushes and trees we were seeing, and we were captivated by them.  But the most amazing part was that we’d be peering at the plants and then be suddenly surrounded by wafts of steam, alternating with bright shafts of sunlight poking through the low cover.

We got back to the main road and followed that for a bit before dipping back into the woods, right before the entrance to Kīlauea Military Camp.  Soon we were overlooking the caldera itself, as close as a tourist could get in May 2019.  Within Kīlauea Caldera is Halemaʻumaʻu Crater; at some times you can see magma actually bubbling up to the top of this crater, but we were not able to approach anywhere near enough for that, and also the magma level is way down since the 2018 eruptions.  So what we saw was not spectacular, but was probably just as meaningful.

We could see for miles and miles to the West and to the South, and the caldera gaped before us.  Everything in the distance was brown and gray and black and white.  There were no colors in the caldera, just miles of mud and rock and geysers of steam where the Earth had cracked.  Just in front of us the lush vegetation dropped off, and one was alarmed by the realization that the edge of the caldera was creeping slowly towards us.  As we walked along the Crater Rim Trail, we saw folds and gaps in the ground where the next wave of terra firma was about to fall into the crevasse, as delineated by the jets of steam rising from these gaps.

We passed a roadside turnout, where the hordes of tourists who don’t like to leave their cars far behind had gathered for selfies.  Many of these people were very big, and we moved past that section pretty quickly, thinking that they might be complicit in the next collapse.  Another mile or so down the trail and we finally made it back to the VC, where we were ready for lunch.

The few available picnic tables were occupied and the intermittent rain had started up again.  But we found a vacant bench on the front porch of the Volcano Art Center Gallery, which is really worth a look, and ate our PB&B sandwiches there.  I fired up my phone and was able to watch highlights of the Bruins game two 6-2 victory over Carolina.  The game had started at 9:00 our time and was over by lunch.

We took turns checking out the Art Center, which had some amazing stuff.  Nothing we could afford though!

OK, what next?  We knew we wanted to drive down Chain of Craters Road; we saw a few places we wanted to stop at along there, and that informal plan turned out great.  Jumped in the car and soon were headed precipitously downhill yet again, twisting and turning past the half-closed Kīlauea Iki trailhead and Thurston Lava Tube.  We eschewed more trails around the caldera and headed down and down to see the devastation (or creation?) it had wrought.

What we were headed for first was the Mauna Ulu trailhead area.  There’s an option of going for a long hike into the backcountry at that trailhead, but we instead just decided to poke around.  And this was just amazing!

We left the car amongst lush vegetation in the parking lot and headed a bit down the trail and suddenly we were in another world.  We were surrounded by heaps of incredibly jagged, threatening, and fragile ʻaʻā lava, like something Frodo and Sam would see on Mount Doom.  On one side it towered up over us like jagged tarballs, and on another side it had shattered into shards of black glass.  We followed the cairns left by the NPS into the lava field and saw rifts in the Earth where the lava had recently bubbled up.  If you fell down those rifts you might be in serious trouble.

This was such new rock!  It was like a demon glass blower inside those rifts had spewed these boulders up onto the plateau we were standing on, and then you realized that actually the whole plateau was part of the process itself.  Though high on a mountain, we were in a part of the world that hadn’t existed for that long and was made entirely of the volcanic stuff we were seeing.  When I think back on the trip, though Mauna Ulu was nowhere near the prettiest or most spectacular sight, this was one of the most impactful.

Wow!  We visited the vault toilets and got back in the car and continued down the steep road, and soon were blown away even more when the vegetation dropped away and we were staring out at miles and miles of steeply pitched, just hardened lava, ending in the beautiful blue Pacific Ocean.  This landscape of black rock, blue sea and sky, and white clouds was only broken by a few patches of green trees, as the road pitched more and more steeply downhill, towards the sea.

We finally reached another plateau, thousands of feet down but still way above the ocean.  Our next stop was the Pu‘u Loa Petroglyphs trail.  We packed water for this hike, and we needed it.  The black rock on either side had been soaking up the sun all day and it radiated the heat back at us as we scampered over the pāhoehoe lava toward the boardwalk the NPS had erected around the biggest concentrations of petroglyphs.  If not for the stiff wind, that we barely noticed because it was so steady, we would have roasted.

Amazing as the petroglyphs are (why did they carve them so far from the road we wondered??), we were even more amazed by the undulations and wrinkles in the pāhoehoe.  It sure was bleak out here at first glance, but as in most desert situations, there was amazing life in the cracks.  We saw the most beautiful flowers out in the reaches of that incredibly extensive lava field, and rows of ferns thriving in creases in the rock.

Another amazing place!  We’d been underwhelmed by Volcanoes earlier in the day, but knew this was short-sighted and by that point later in the day we were gibbering lunatics about the Park, and that wasn’t just because of the heat.  Add this near the top of the list of great places in the US that everyone should see.  And then we were off and down the road again.  And though it was less precipitous at this point, it was just as spectacular.

Though we were still a few miles from the sea, we could see huge waves crashing on the cliffs and fountains of white and blue water thrown into the sky.  It was incredible, watching the ocean swells mash against the cliffs from a distance.  And when we got close and parked and made our way out there, it was even more incredible.  Lots of people were down at the end of the road, but we were all pretty silent, just imagining the miles and miles of lava that had flowed down the mountain behind us to form these majestic cliffs and watching the dramatic efforts of the ocean to beat back the advance of stone.  The powerful Pacific pulled back and then swelled again and again against the cliffs, “When meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky” … but on a scale that Clement Clarke Moore would never have imagined.  With each wave we could feel the cliffs shake.

And below us was the Holei Sea Arch, awash in the swells.  For once, I was glad I was not kayaking here!

So that was the end of the Park for us.  We knew that we’d better get on the road if we were going to get back to Waikoloa that evening … it sure seemed like a long way away.  Back up that incredible road (the Elantra was a champion again, but it’s a good thing I’m not a nervous driver because some of the switchbacks seemed carved into the sky itself, and at many points if I’d dropped the joint we would have been screaming downhill at a very fast pace), and then finally way back up the mountain, back into the deep green forest.

At last we arrived up at the top of the road … and then we left the Park behind, downhill again towards Volcano and Hilo beyond that.  We had to figure out what to do about food!  We realized that a) we had to eat something somewhere soon and beer would be a plus, b) Hilo is notorious for being closed up on a Sunday, and c) it was Mother’s Day and if there was anywhere that was open it would probably be packed.  But Sarah had been studying the guidebook and the internet on her phone and found a place that might be weird enough for us, the Seaside Restaurant and Aqua Farm on the outskirts of Hilo.

Dave’s phone had reception so he tried them and got through.  Amazingly, they’d just had a cancellation and so we grabbed the reservation for 6:00, while still around 45 minutes away.  Hawaiʻi is pretty big and it took us a while to get there, down and down and down through thick vegetation on the country highway into Hilo, and then past the miles and miles of American strip development with its warehouses, fast food joints, and poorly constructed housing until we approached a downtown.  There we turned right and followed the coast road to the South of Hilo, where there was a city park set between two breakwaters, and suddenly a funky restaurant by a fishpond on the right.

This was the Seaside and we were just able to squeeze into the last parking place in their lot.  Can’t say anything bad about this dining experience!  They sat us down at a nice table with a view of the ocean, got us some Kona beers and mixed drinks as soon as you can imagine, and told us the catch of the dayay: ahi, mahi-mahi, and ono.  My Dog, how to choose?!?

Both Sarah and I went for the ono, one of us getting the eponymous “catch of the day” and the other getting some kind of special.  I forget the details, but both came with our choice of sauces and we both selected a macadamia-pesto sauce that was to die for.  This was one of the best seafood dinners I’ve ever had.  Dave opted for something a bit lighter, but it was exquisite too.  And when we finished they gave Sarah a Mother’s Day rose!

We could have stayed there forever, but the crowd at the restaurant was starting to thin out a bit and we knew we had a long road in front of us yet.  Finally stumbled out into the still crowded parking lot and the humidity and sea breeze, and took off.

Stunningly, it was pretty flat for a few miles back to the beginning of the Saddle Road!  But soon we were climbing and climbing again, and then the night closed in and we got up there several thousand feet, and then the rain started.  And this rain got very serious, it was driving down pretty hard as we rocketed farther and farther into the clouds.  Luckily, the Saddle Road is lined with reflectors and though it was pitch black and pouring rain with thick fog, our path up the mountain was plainly marked.

We reached the top and started steeply downhill, and soon were below the dark clouds, and then were out of the rain.  Sooner than expected, we got back to 19 and traversed the few miles over to the Waikoloa Road, and motored on down that.  We were back in the coastal Resort area of South Kohala before we knew it, seemingly worlds away from the volcanoes and the Seaside Restaurant.  How could we tell any of these people at the Resort what we’d experienced that day?

Parked the car, climbed the entrance hill, and then walked the long perp walk down the Museum Walkway, and finally back to the Ocean Tower.  Back to our room and we all took deep sighs … we’d seen some pretty amazing stuff that day!

Puʻukoholā Heiau and Pololū Valley

Saturday May 11

OK, it was morning in paradise!  We did a pretty good job of stretching out the clock, though I was up by 6:15 or so (12:15 body clock time, but changing).  They have a breakfast place in the resort and so after our morning ablutions we headed there, soon after they opened at 7.  And though we were ready for outrageous prices everywhere we turned, this was over the top.  Their full breakfast buffet was $40 per person, OMG!!!  Whatever, we needed food badly and so went for it that morning.  And it was great, nice omelet station, good bacon and sausage choices, great fruit and pastry choices, and fine juice and coffee.  But this experience redoubled our determination to get ourselves to a grocery store and not be bound to restaurants for breakfasts and lunches.

It also illustrated how big the damn Resort is.  The breakfast place was well located in the middle of the complex but was not close to our room and had taken some walking to get to.  We exited out the back of the “Big Island Breakfast” (our waitress, Sally, told us that she expected us back each morning we’d be there, she may still be waiting) and Dave went directly back to the room while Sarah and I started out on the meandering pathways to try to get oriented.  We took a look at their cesspool of a lagoon (I exaggerate, but this was more a milky fish pond than the clear water you see in brochures) and wandered past the seaside chapel, through some nice bronze gates, past beautiful flowering plants, past an intriguing looking swimming pool (the slide wasn’t yet open), out to Buddha Point.  There were a couple of guests “meditating” there and so we didn’t disturb them, but continued around past a few workmen lazily setting up for a destination wedding on their lawn, and around to the far side of the Ocean Tower that our room looked out on.

We saw several of the mynas, sparrows, doves, and Saffron Finches that we’d seen out our balcony, and also a lone Nēnē, Hawai ʻ i’s endemic goose.

But then there was no way back inside the Resort unless we reversed our steps, and that would have been giving up!  We kept on going and kept on going around the Ocean Tower and the Palace Tower, thinking that we’d find a way back in and well aware that we didn’t have our hats or our sunscreen on, and the heat was starting to soar.  We tried to sneak back in over a wall, but realized we’d have to drop down pretty far to do it, so didn’t.  Finally made it back to the entrance to the Convention Center in the Resort and ducked inside to the welcome shade and air conditioning.  Stairs took us back to the Museum Walkway and we were back where we started!  Oh well, it had been a successful excursion in getting us indoctrinated to the scope of the Resort.

Back in the room and we agreed to go ahead with the plan we’d discussed for our first day.  We realized there was a danger of us being hit with jet lag-related fatigue and so didn’t want to attempt a huge trip over to the other side of the island.  Instead we sunscreened up, loaded our packs, made our way back down the blessed Museum Walkway and through the heat down the hill to the car, and got the hell out of Dodge (with some delay at the self-serve parking kiosk, which was very temperamental, everyone struggled with it).

Well, we thought we were getting out of there, but it was a long drive by other Resorts out Waikoloa Drive up to Queen K Highway, where we turned left towards the small port town of Kawaihae (12 miles away) and were surrounded by beauty again.  The South Kohala coast became less of a lava field and more of a desert landscape, with rolling brown hills and pockets of greenery.  Our windshield was filled with a vision of Haleakalā over on Maui again, and it was a bright, warm morning with a gentle trade wind.  We were tempted to check out one of the highly-rated beaches we rolled by on the left, but instead pressed on up to our first stop, Puʻukoholā Heiau National Historical Site, just South of Kawaihae.

We turned downhill into the Puʻukoholā Heiau parking lot and spent a wonderful hour or two looking at exhibits in their open-air plaza and getting a good dose of Hawaiian history, and then walking their trails down the hill to view the ruins of the namesake Heiau and also the older Mailekini Heiau.  The latter was built pre-Europeans and still holds many archaeological mysteries, while the newer one was built by Kamehameha I and so coincided with the introduction of European influence.

We followed the trail around and back up the hill to the car, past Spencer Beach (County) Park.  This wasn’t a long visit, but it was just what we needed.  The climate soothed our souls, the ocean was blue and stretched for miles, and the wind was constant and insistent but gentle.  We all agreed that this short stop marked the real beginning of our vacation.  Until then we’d been traveling, lost in practical matters, and hadn’t been able to slow way down and really absorb all of this new stuff we were seeing, smelling, and feeling.  We’d experienced the same thing on our California vacation in 2012; in that case it took us until we were finally in the woods at Yosemite to feel we were on vacation.  And that walk around Puʻukoholā Heiau NHS gave us the time to finally feel acclimated and to realize that this was a real, tangible part of our world, with its own history, culture, and character.

Yay!  We were all feeling great and continued on up the Kohala coast, finally twisting around toward the East and skirting the Northern tip of the Island.  It suddenly turned impossibly lush, the road turned smaller and smaller and went over several one-lane bridges, and we were way up on a bluff over the pounding Pacific on the windward side of the Island.  Our goal was the Awini Trail down into Pololū Valley at the very end of route 270.

It was a Saturday and there were a lot of cars parked along the edges of the road by the time we arrived that late morning.  I don’t know where to begin describing it.  The colors were wonderfully bright and intense, the East-Northeast trade wind was strong and steady, pushing long breakers and then rising up the cliff and past us into the sky.  Though there was chatter from all the excited people at the trailhead, there was also a peacefulness.  And the backdrop of the sensory experience was the smell of the warm dirt and the mature plants holding the sea cliff together, and the exuberance of the plant life.

Our guidebook (Hawaii, the Big Island Revealed by Andrew Doughty, 8th ed.) says that as good as the view down into the valley is from the overlook at the top, the best view is about a third of the way down the trail, and it was just breathtaking.  You could see directly down to the black sand beach and the beautiful colors of the ocean.  But then you turned your gaze up a bit and could see way, way down the coast past lovely cliff after lovely cliff, pocked with caves and bordered with small islands and black rocks.  And then you looked up at the cliffs, covered with the lushest varieties of green trees and bushes, and then inland up the contours of the cliffs where the mist was clinging to the heights and you could infer the valleys leading further inland by the patterns of the mist.

We kept on down the trail, passing and being passed by a variety of types, from talkative tourists who weren’t wearing the right shoes for such a hike, to families with lots of kids who showed many different kinds of energy and inertia, to young people in impossibly good shape who had the right shoes, the right packs, and all the right gear for a long hike over into the other valleys, to some North Island types who were wearing no shoes and were obviously a little annoyed that there were people from away cluttering up their special spot.

Down at the bottom there was a forest of lovely trees leading to a small river that twisted up into the yellow, green, and brown valley.  The river mouth led gently to the beach (seemingly uphill?!?), and that was quite a contrast to the dreamy riparian atmosphere.  It was a jumble of round rocks and sharp boulders being lifted up and smashed against each other with every incoming breaker.  This was not a beach for swimming or strolling on … the piles of rocks did pull back in some places to show stretches of black sand, but they were being rearranged constantly and were far from a stable surface.

We made our way down it anyway, determined to reach the caves that were exposed at the other end and to find the continuation of the trail up the cliff into the next valley.  But we weren’t going to extend our hike that far!  We were feeling pretty ready for lunch but temporarily settled for a few water breaks while we explored the far end of the beach, and then made our way back by a small trail through the woods behind it.

We were hot and nicely exhausted by the time we found a lovely spot for lunch, where we were surrounded by the woods but close enough to the beach to watch the waves and the spray.  There were some comfortable logs to sit on among the clumps of lava boulders.  I’d made a slew of peanut butter and bacon sandwiches for the trip and they hit the spot there, along with a lot of water and a long rest.

Time to cross back over the river on another jumble of small rocks and set off back up the trail.  As with many situations, going back seemed shorter than getting there.  And though we stopped for many short rests while climbing that very steep trail, it ended sooner than we wanted it to.  This dip into Pololū Valley had been another magic few hours in an impossibly beautiful place.

The car hadn’t fallen into the valley, though we wouldn’t have been surprised to find the sides of the road sagging even more than they were.  Things probably collapse into the valley with some frequency.  The car was hot and we were too, but a little breeze through open windows and then a lot of blasting air conditioning put things right.

We wound back up the small and twisting road, over the one-lane bridges, heading for the turn South onto the Kohala Mountain Road (route 250) in Hawi.  Our plan was to head up the Mountain Road and then down into Waimea, where we’d pick up the Belt Road again (route 190 for that stretch) and head down the Waikoloa Road to a promised grocery store, a possibly quick and uneventful 45 mile drive.

BUT …  as with many things, this involved more than you might think.  It was beautiful and blue and bright and hot down in the valley and up on the North-facing cliff in Hawi.  But then we turned up the ridge road and started going up and up Kohala mountain, and then saw the clouds closing in, and kept on going up and up, and then we were shut in by a pea-soup cloud and then it started raining, even though the sun was still poking through here and there.  This was very much ranch country, even as vertiginous as it was.  We saw horses, cows, sheep, water tanks, and pumps in the middle of hilly pastures, fences, and barbed wire.  The growth had turned from tropical to large trees and thick, tall grass.  It would take a lot of cows to eat all that grass, and the ones we saw were trying.

But then we kept on going up!  I thought Kohala was the small, older mountain??  We got up to around 4200 feet and felt very high up in the sky.  The peak of Kohala was to our left and was dramatically split vertically by a thick cloudbank, like a half-pulled back curtain, streaks of gray and thick swirls of cotton candy on one face, while the other was clear and bathed in the afternoon light.

And then we went down and down, even steeper than the road we’d just driven up!  We landed in the town of Waimea (Kamuela), where we turned left on 19 and right on 190, and down the 20 or so miles to the Waikoloa Road.  There we turned right and went downhill even more, and even more, twisting and turning through the late afternoon light while the surrounding vegetation turned into stunted trees and bleached grass as we got closer and closer to the coast.

Turned right into Waikoloa Village finally and there it was (as the guidebook had told us), a little gas station with a small KTA Super Store behind it.  I didn’t know how much to trust the gas gauge at that point, especially since the needle hadn’t moved that much even with such a strenuous drive.  And we were planning a long trip for Sunday.  But it only took a few gallons to top up the tank, and then we headed for a KTA experience.

There was no microwave in the hotel room and only a small refrigerator, so we shopped carefully.  We loaded up with a reasonable amount of yogurt, cereal, (native) bananas, bread, peanut butter and jelly, granola bars, beer, coffee, and big bottles of water.  And we remembered to get paper towels, plastic utensils, and sandwich wrappings!

Loaded it all in the car, drove back through a few last surprise rain drops, and soon we were back at the hot and arid Resort.  We elected to take the tram again since we were loaded down, and it started off the wrong way again.  It was very crowded and jolly that afternoon however.  Our compartment-mates admired our smart purchases, most of all the beer, which they seemed to hope we’d crack.  They lived in Hilo but had driven over to the Resort to splurge on a Saturday night outing.  Kind of strange if you ask me, but I guess if you live on an island, you take variety of recreation where you can find it.

Made it back to the room and absolutely packed the dorm-style refrigerator with our purchases, then cracked a beer and took a few deep breaths.  We’d had a busy day already but had not gotten a late start, and there was still some time left in the afternoon and we were surprised to realize that we had some energy left.  So we decided to make it a “pool” afternoon.

The Hilton Waikoloa has a variety of pools, and we thought we’d find some fun there.  We’d loved the assortment of pools at the Mexican Resort we’d visited, but unfortunately these just didn’t fill that same bill for us.  Maybe it was the lack of poolside bars … yeah, I’m sure that had something to do with it.

We picked up beach towels from the machine downstairs and then headed right over to the “adult” pool in the nicely shaded center of the huge Ocean Tower.  There were a few grumpy-looking adults settled in on lounges around the pool, and a few in the water.  We jumped right in but soon realized that a) it was a salt-water pool for some reason (why do you put salt water in a pool?? I find this ridiculous) and b) no part of it was over 5 feet!  What a lousy excuse for a pool.  I went back and forth a few times, but swimming/lounging in a pool like that is not that much fun, especially when the grumpy “adults” at poolside obviously thought that fun was out of the question.

So we went over to the “Kohala Pool” and found that to be a little not-fun also.  This pool is an array of 4 or 5 (depending on who’s counting) small pools connected by slides, with attempts at greenery scattered in between.  Dave and I gave it a shot, but it was full of obnoxious kids, the slides were lame, the pool again never got that deep, and the area was ringed with glaring parents.  Like, what were these suspicious guys doing in the kids pool??  So we got out and joined Sarah at a chair she’d barely had time to camp out at.  We all decided that we’d had it for the pool experience, let’s go have a beer.

Showered the sweat, salt water, chlorine, and whatever from the day off back at the room, and watched a nice sunset from our balcony.  Ho-hum, how could we complain about this?!?  I will describe fauna in more detail in a future post, but one of the most delightful things about hanging out on our balcony was watching the endlessly curious and very busy birds.  Watching the mongooses out on the golf course was another great source of amusement.

The people watching was sometimes fun too.  The destination wedding had been in full swing when we were out at the pools, and when we retired to our balcony we watched a gaggle of the kids spill out onto the golf course, where they took over the third green and had lots of fun.  And then the bride and groom came over with a trio of professional photographers/makeup artists, and they posed for pictures with the sunset in the background.  Very nice!

OK, enough of that, it was time for a dinner excursion to the Tropics Ale House.  Sarah and I had discovered how to escape out the Convention Center entrance in our excursion that morning, and this was great because it meant we didn’t have to walk all the way back to the main lobby.  Theoretically we could have cut over diagonally to the Ale House from there, across to Keana Place.  But when we got there we saw that the area in between was a huge ʻaʻā field, and it would have taken at least several hours to walk over and around the boulders, and this would not have been a good time.  So we stayed on the sidewalk and it was a very pleasant stroll over there as the day started to cool down just a little, the afterglow from the sunset lingered and lingered, we could hear the breakers on the coast to our right, and the lights of the Resort area came on all around us.

Unfortunately, when we got there we found over half their beers were off!  And they had a noisy clientele that Saturday night and a pretty small menu.  But I had another Kua Bay and then a New Belgium Voodoo Ranger and we had an acceptable meal (I got a beef and pork burger).  And then Dave and I split a bottle of Rogue “Dead Dead” Ale, their Dead Guy Ale aged in whiskey barrels.  Even so, we made it back alive after the  leisurely meal and the long, long walk back to the Ocean Tower (which included a tour of their conference facilities), and soon it was time for bed after a long day.

Getting To Hawaiʻi

Friday May 10

We’d spent a good amount of time preparing for our Hawaiʻi trip, including a lot of concentration on packing the right stuff.  We knew most of the trip would be in hot/beach environments, so we had shorts, bathing suits, snorkeling gear, sunscreen, etc.  But a good part of the time would be in rainy/mountainous environments, so we also packed rain gear, mosquito repellent, boots, hats/gloves, etc.  And we also had flashlights, books, water bottles, rope (you never know!), and other things.  Then we had to stow it all in a reasonable number of suitcases.

Dave was up on the weekend before we left for the chief purpose of war-gaming this, and we were all agreed on what to bring.  We did final packing during the week, and then were totally ready at a little before 7AM on Friday when the Woburn Cab driver showed up in our driveway.

We put away the last dishes, turned the heat off, and were out of there.  Pretty easy ride into Logan with the Woburn Cab driver with the luxury car and the handlebar mustache.  Normal check-in at Hawaiian Airlines in Terminal E, quick trip through the TSA station, long wait at Starbucks for coffee, and then a routine wait at the gate.  The Bruins had won the first game of their third round of the playoffs against Carolina the night before and I really wanted to pick up the Globe (our home subscription had been put on hiatus), but the news stand only had New York and national papers!

A full HA89 pulled out from Logan right on time at 9:20 and we then had to wait in a long line to take off, finally getting way up in the clouds and heading West.  I had a good long thriller to read and the hours breezed by, though we rode through a lot of turbulence, especially over the Great Lakes.

I had the window seat next to Dave, and Sarah was on the aisle in the row in front of us, near the back of the plane and over on the right side (we had opted for the sides rather than the middle three).  As we passed over the Cascades we had a beautiful view of the snow-covered peaks of Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens, soon before leaving the continent behind and heading out over the wide ocean.

Then we traveled and traveled and traveled.  The trip tracker stopped showing our progress over the Pacific for some reason, but then suddenly we were approaching Oʻahu and dropped down close enough to see waves and a few boats out on the water.  We had to circle for a half hour or so before we could shoot the runway at Daniel K. Inouye Airport in Honolulu, and we got some great views of the South side of Oʻahu and then of Diamond Head, Waikiki Beach, and Pearl Harbor.

By the time we landed around 3:10PM local time we were getting pretty late for our connection to Kona, but the airline was aware of this of course and we and a few others quickly took the Wiki Wiki Shuttle over to the local terminal.  We made the connection for the smaller plane to Kona with no problem.  We got a few more views of Oʻahu as we took off on this leg, but clouds and glaring sun pretty much obscured views of Maui and Molokaʻi.

The snack service was as efficient as you might expect on a 45-minute flight, but Dave and I managed to slow them down enough to get our first Hawaiian beer, Pau Hana Pilsner from Maui Brewing Company.  Soon we were descending towards and landing at Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole, and we were suddenly there!  This is a charming little airport that seems to be mostly outside.  The waiting areas, baggage check areas, and security are all under roofs and besides that are open to the air.  We picked up our bags quickly, gawked at our first views of monkeypod trees and the Hawaiian variety of the myna bird.  And then we were off to the National car rental station and soon presented with our choice of Hyundai Elantras.

We picked a blue one that we soon realized was named Hector, and it had plenty of room, a big-enough trunk, good air conditioning, and an acceptable sound system.  We got great mileage out of Hector, even with all the up and down we put him through.  The acceleration was not like in a muscle car but was totally fine, and the car had no problem with the steeper mountain roads, though it did require a little coaxing to stay in low gear on the steepest ascents.

Wow, this had been a pretty painless trip after much worrying about it!  And even though it was now around 4:30PM local time (i.e., 10:30PM our body time), we had plenty of energy left, especially when we got on the road North, on Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway (a.k.a. the Hawaiian Belt Road, or route 19 for this stretch) and the beauty surrounded us.  Hualālai with its cloud cap dominated the view to our right and the Pacific Ocean did the same to our left.  And though there were clusters of green and/or palm trees here and there, we were in the middle of a sea of ʻaʻā lava, in some ways a very bleak and alarming landscape.  As we cruised up the coast we could also see Kohala in front of us of course, and the bulk of Haleakalā on Maui.

The 19 miles up to the Hilton Waikoloa Resort went pretty quickly.  I’d been advised that speed traps are common on the Big Island and so kept to the speed limit, but I saw none that day and actually only saw two (identifiable) policemen the whole week we were there.  We got a parking space in the Hilton’s crowded lot and lugged/dragged our well-loaded suitcases and packs up the walkway to the front entrance.

The Hilton Waikoloa Resort was well-organized in its own way (if you wanted to make it your world), and was scenic, but the most memorable thing about it was that they did not miss any chance to milk more money out of you.  Many people couldn’t take the long walk up the steep hill from the parking lot, especially dragging gear … it was definitely purposely less convenient than it could have been …  and so the entryway and the valet parking were always doing a land-market business.  When we checked in everything went smoothly too, except for the fact that they tried to tell us we wanted a room with a king bed and pull-out sofa, which I think they knew we didn’t want (I had checked three times that we had booked a room with two beds).  I told them firmly that no, we wanted what we’d reserved, and they took some time to locate one.  The guy finally surfaced from his computer screen and told us that yes, they had one of those, but what we probably really wanted was an upgrade to a suite with a better ocean view, 2 queens, and great access to the spa, for only $40/night more.  We declined.

But the nice thing is that while we were being delayed by the upsell attempt, a guy came by with leis.  Sarah accepted a flower lei and Dave and I got seashell necklaces.

Our room was over in the Ocean Tower and there were three options for getting there: walk, take the tram, or take the boat on their canal that paralleled the tram tracks.  We opted for the around 12-minute tram ride (though when we got on it was going the wrong way and so it was 20 minutes), and were delighted with the interior of the Resort, a beautiful setting with their own waterfall, palm trees, beaches, artwork, and greenery everywhere.  We finally got to the Ocean Tower, up the elevator to the 4th floor, and we stumbled into our new home for the next 7 nights.

It really was a fine room, though it could have been better (but not for $40/night!).  The beds were fine though small (doubles), the balcony was nice, the view over the golf course was of the ocean and we saw some great sunsets from the room.  The bathroom counter was barely big enough for all three of us plus the coffee maker, but it was, and the clothes storage was also barely big enough.  The shower was ok, though you could not really get it cold (by New England standards) when you wanted to.  The refrigerator was just a dorm-sized cube but was in its own cabinet and so was quiet.  There was no microwave but we were able to set up a small kitchen area on top of the refrigerator cabinet.  The air conditioning was acceptable and again, not too noisy.  So the room was fine, and we soon got everything out of the suitcases and put away and got the suitcases stowed in the back of the closet.  And we were there!  Now what?

Well, by then we were getting pretty tired.  We set out for dinner thinking we should go for the Tropics Ale House we’d seen on the map, back out of the Resort and a few blocks away.  But we soon realized that would be too much of a trek.  We decided to settle for the nearby Boat Landing Grill in the center of the Ocean Tower, but when we checked it out it was deserted and closed!  A sign told us it would be closed for a week.  So we went for choice three, which was the Kona Tap Room back near the main lobby of the Hilton Waikoloa grounds.

Getting there was the problem.  This was our first experience of the long walk through the Museum Walkway from the Ocean Tower all the way down past the main lobby to the Tap Room.  The Walkway is an endless succession of artwork, none of it really worth remarking on.  Most of it is Asian, though the end closer to the Ocean Tower is all Western style.  Most of it is reproductions, as you might expect in basically an open-air setting, though the Walkway is covered and could be mostly closed in in a severe storm.  Some of the pieces are in plexiglass cases, and those may be originals.

But a lot of these pieces are just begging for a little editing, especially when you’re doing that endless perp walk (we must have trekked down that *long* Gallery 25 times in the  week we were there) and after a few times you’d seen the pieces often enough to get a little irreverent about them and feel they could use an extra tweak or two.  Often this editing took the form of well-placed poops (I never did this, though I was severely tempted).  These weren’t really poops, but were small, round black rocks taken out of the nearby landscaping and placed artistically.  They were mostly picked up by the maintenance crew each morning, but by the end of the day they had somehow reappeared.  As Sarah says, this appealed to the 6-year old in all of us, though perhaps not to the cleaning ladies.

Where was I?  We ended up plunking ourselves down at the Kona Tap Room and waiting forever for our food (the waitress had to help out in the kitchen, they were short staffed that night).  But we got a few good Kona Brewing Company beers (their best to our tastes was the Kua Bay IPA) and a tasty dinner.  By the time we finished it was getting near 3AM by our body clocks, but we made it back to the room and somehow got ourselves into bed after a long, long day.

More Sisters, At City Winery Boston

We were recovering from a *long* weekend of music down in Port Chester, but we had another concert to go to!  Luther Dickinson and Sisters Of the Strawberry Moon, fresh from opening for (and accompanying) Phil Lesh in Port Chester were going to be playing at City Winery Boston that Monday night (3/18) and we had tickets.

Went home after work, had dinner there, and then Sarah and I slipped into the city and parked in her garage.  The Celtics had just started and there were some frantic last-minute parkers as we walked down to the North End.

We had seats up in the front tables, over on the right side.  We tried to order beer but they were out of their only good one, so I had a cheap Naragansett.  They get very bad grades at City winery for food and drink; maybe the expensive wine is ok but who knows?

Soon the band came out and we were delighted to see that Grahame Lesh was still with them, on bass.  Drew Lindsay had a grand piano (probably the same one we saw Holly Bowling play last time we were there) and he was very present in the sound, which hadn’t been the case when we saw them Saturday.

They played pretty much the same setlist as they had on Saturday, highlighted by a great version of Luther’s Prayer For Peace.  While Amy was tuning up her mandolin for one of her leads I said (we were so close, shouting was not necessary), “Brokedown Palace!”  She thought I may have been kidding and said, “We played that the other day!”  I said, “I know, I was there.”  Damn Deadheads.  Anyway, I didn’t really expect them to play it and they didn’t.  Grahame had a mike for harmonies but didn’t do a vocal lead.

They closed with Alright Alright with Allison jumping around like Kokopelli with a clarinet … she and JT were right in front of us.  And then for an encore they did their American Flowers, dedicated to Jimmy LaFave, and got us all to sing along.

Short night but lots of fun!  We were home and in bed by 10:30 or so.