Well, we got off to an early start today, and were out of the hotel
about 8:30am and headed south for the Volcano Park. It is a long ride
around the west and south side of the island to the park, but there were
some fantastic views and interesting terrain to see.

Other than soda and bathroom stops, we only made one stop on the way to
the Volcano Park, and that was at the Black Sands Beach. We were not
really impressed, either. I thought it looked like someone just dumped
a few truckloads of finely crushed grey granite on the beach. I guess I
was expecting to see a much larger area of fine dark black fine sand,
and that just was not the case…

After that we moved on to Volcano Park, and I was somewhat disappointed
there as well. We arrived about noon and found out that any of the
currently active lava flows were at least a four hour round trip walk.
Nothing was accessible by car, even down at the end of the Chain of
Craters road by the seashore. Given my current muscle conditions, it
was out of the question to even try.

We did make the hike to the Thurston Lava Tube, and that was about all
my legs could take for the day. It is about a half mile walk, and has a
100 foot climb after leaving the tube, just about killed my legs for the
rest of the day.

Fortunately, we stopped at all the other points on the crater rim drive
first, so we saw everything along the main circle, at least. We decided
to not take the drive down to the ocean, since we would not see any
active lava sites, so we headed out for Hilo.

We stopped at the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Factory Store after a quick
bite for lunch about 3pm. We picked up some snacks at the store and
headed for the waterfalls around Hilo. We saw Rainbow Falls, Peepee
Falls and Boiling Pots and then headed north for the hotel.

Shortly after leaving Hilo, we saw a sign on the road for the “Scenic
Route”, so we took it. It is a 4 mile long, narrow, curvy and hilly
road along the coastline through tropical rain forests and across some
of the nicest small streams with cascading rapids and small waterfalls.
Marianne took many pictures to be posted at a later date when we have
high speed access again…

After the scenic tour, we got back on the Hawai’i Loop Highway and
headed back to the hotel. We got back about 2 hours later, around 7:30
and stopped at the King’s Shops for a quick dinner at Subway, as we both
are rather tired, and did not feel like a big dinner….

Last night I worked on some of the previous day’s pictures, but don’t
think I will get them posted until we return home because we don’t have
high speed access until that time….