Monday was a busy day! We started with breakfast served at our hotel. After breakfast I dropped Will off in Kea'au to meet with some people from the Kameamea schools. They toured a potential site for planting pongamia in Puna, and from Will's perspective, the land looked good. While Will was out traversing the land, I went back to the hotel to get ready for the day and pack up. Around lunch time I picked Will up and we ate lunch in Hilo at Sweet Cane Cafe. They had amazing vegan food! We enjoyed a yummy taro burger and a pesto sandwich. Taro is a big thing in Hawaii and I really came to appreciate it.
After lunch Will got picked up by David, a guy who is going to be overlooking the planting sites in Hawaii. He has his own macadamia nut orchards, and Will toured those sites with him.
While Will was off at his meeting with David, I drove down to Puna to visit Lava Tree State Park. This park contains lava molds of tree trunks. In the 1700s a lava flow swept through and coated the trunks of the trees and left lava molds of the tree trunks. Now they look like tubes of lava. It was raining a bit while I was there, but it made it feel even more like a rainforest.
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| So many chickens in Hawaii! |
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| Lava Tree |
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| New growth on the lava tree. |
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| You can see where the trunk of the tree used to be, and now it's just a lava mold. |
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| You can see the lava flow. |
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| Lots of growth coming out of the lava. Many of the tubes had new trees growing from the top. |
Right around the time I was done at the park, Will called to say he was done as well. I picked him up again in Kea'au and then it was off to the Volcano area of the Big Island. We didn't have enough time, and it was pretty cold and rainy anyway, so we unfortunately didn't get to see the volcano that is currently erupting. Hopefully we can get to this next time; we'll definitely need a full day to see Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and it would be incredible to go on a helicopter or boat ride to see the lava flowing into the ocean.
On our drive to our hotel in Volcano we got to stop at Volcano Winery for a wine tasting. Sadly they were out of their pinot noir because it had been so popular, so we didn't get to try that. The other wines they offered were very sweet. Some of them smelled very strange, like you almost wanted hold your breath and not smell it while you were drinking it! But they tasted pretty good, though not our favorite. (I didn't get any pictures here! It was cold and raining so we just ran from the car to the tasting room and didn't get to enjoy any of the outdoor area. Next time!)
We checked into our hotel, the Kilauea Lodge. It was so warm and cozy! I was reminded of Yosemite while we were staying at the lodge. Our room had a great heater and a fireplace which helped me warm up after being out in the cold. We had an early dinner at the restaurant of Kilauea lodge and then retreated to our room to enjoy wine and a game of scrabble by the fireplace. Will won the game, but only because I traded him a letter and he proceeded to spell the word "favorite" using all of his letters and got a ton of points! Otherwise I totally would have won . . .
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| Our cozy room! |
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| Door to our room. |
We enjoyed our time in Volcano but next time we'll definitely try to plan more time there.
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