Our travel track for our 19th Anniversary, when we chose to circumnavigate the Big Island of Hawaii. Over 250 miles traveled in about 6 hours, with some interesting stops along the way.
We are back in Kailua-Kona after a full day circumnavigating the island. We traveled from partly cloudy and mid 70’s here into mostly cloudy along the western slopes of Mauna Loa.
The South Point area was hot, mid 80’s, & sunny with winds in the 30-40 mph range, enough to push against me and make walking difficult.
Traveling along the southern shores, temps dropped, clouds built. By the time we reached the 4,035 foot summit outside the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park entrance, it was a full fledged rain and temps about 68°F, so we decided against a visit to the part. Besides, it was already after 3pm, so not much time to do anything there…
Fog and rain prevailed most of the way down into Hilo, but cleared up quite a bit as we made our way north along the eastern shoreline. However, even before we made the turn west towards Waimea to cross the northern “saddle”, the weather declined.
By the time we were starting our ascent westward, we were fully in the clouds with light rain, temperatures in the low 60’s and limited visibility. This lasted about 20 miles but we moved out of the clouds with only light rain before we got to Waimea.
Once we started down the slope to the South Kohala Coast, the sun quickly returned and by the time we completed the decent the temperatures were back into the mid 80’s. Now in Kailua-Kona, just after sunset, it is partly cloudy and 81°F. Just in time for a nice Anniversary Dinner at Island Lava Java, our next stop for the day.
Overall, I think we had a wonderful day driving around the island of Hawaii for our 19th Anniversary, something I can truly say was something we never though would be in our future 19 years ago. We were too busy dealing with Severe Thunderstorms (Friday), 3″ of Torrential Rain (Saturday) and 6″ of Snow (Sunday Morning) on our wedding weekend!!
Big Island Travels, Day 6: 05-11-2015
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