Aloha 2011

Day six- This is our new adventure day. We hit the road early and headed down to the southernmost part of the island. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park increased in size by 50% in 2003 when the park service partnered with Nature Conservancy to purchase a large ranch by the park. The Kahuku unit of the park is mostly undeveloped, but now open to the public for a few hours a day on weekends. We reached the Kahuku entrance just as it was opening for the day and spent several hours hiking across lava fields, hills and pasture land, and driving up some rugged stretches of road. It is beautiful there. We went along a primitive airstrip for a little while. The surface sparkled, and when we looked closer, we could see that it was covered with olivine, a green, glass like sand. So cool. We also went past the remains of some support buildings for a secret military radar station, a cinder quarry and out to a sunken, forested crater.

 

Someone had a little extra fun building this cairn

 

View from the top of a hill

 

Flowers on the hill. Too bad they're invasive species.

 

Some hitch hikers from the invasive clover. I had to change my socks before we went into an uninfested area of Kahuku

 

Looking across the sunken pit crater

After we left Kahuku, we ate our PBJs, tangerines, chips and fresh-baked cookies while we drove into the other section of the park to take our tradition stroll through the Thurston Lava Tube. I love this little walk because there are so many birds singing in the rainforest here. It’s especially nice early in the day when there aren’t so many people around.

We also made our traditional stop at Akatsuka Orchid greenhouse. So many pretty flowers. Somebody’s Father (SF) likes the tiny Oncidium orchids. 

I love the  spicy cloves and cinnamon fragrance of the Cattleya hybridMaui Plum ‘Volcano Queen.’

We hadn’t been to Lava Trees State Park for a few years so we took a side trip to see how the park renovations turned out. It’s a beautiful little park.

The ground in Hawaii can be uneven and I’m frequently looking down to watch my step. Sometimes it pays to look up! I almost missed this cool silhouette.

When we passed through Hilo we stopped to look for a cabinet that SF had admired. The cabinet was gone, but we noticed a little restaurant supply store where we did some fun browsing.

We stopped in Waimea to eat dinner at the Red Water Café again. We had eaten there on our first trip around the island on day 3. It used to be Fujimama’s and I’ll miss the wonderful food of the old restaurant, but Red Water Café has nice food and they won SF’s loyalty with their excellent sushi rolls. On day 3 he had a delicious roll of tempura Ono- cucumber roll wrapped in soy paper with crab on top. Even I thought it was tasty, and I’m not a fan of rolls. I don’t care for nori- a seaweek wrapper, but I liked the soy paper wrap. Tonight I had a nice Thai Caesar salad with calamari, shaved root veggies and lemongrass-Caesar dressing. Yum!