Hello everyone,
We hope this letter finds you a little warmer there in Missouri. The temps here pretty much stay the same 85/75 with an occasional rain shower. Our story left off with a teaser…a submarine ride! By now, you know Trevor has a tendency to come up with crazy ideas that seem to turn out okay. When we started planning our trip to Hawaii, he looked into the Atlantis Submarine. A boat shuttles you out to a docked submarine floating and ready to dive. You climb down a ladder and sit inside the hull with about 30 other people and the crew. It was only 45 minutes, why not? At 53 ft. below we were seeing tons of fish playing in the coral reef. At 111 feet, the deepest we went, we saw a sunken boat and a reef shark came out from underneath it! The whole dive was narrated by a crew member who told us the kinds of fish and the story behind the ship wreck. It was a wild experience. I never thought I would be able to say I went for a ride in a submarine 😊
The thing about the Big Island is … it’s big. Everything is far apart. The drives are epic, but you have to plan for the time. After lunch and a walk around the boardwalk shops in Kona, we headed back to our side of the island, about a 2 ½ hour drive. About an hour from ‘home’ we passed Punaluu Beach, and so we stopped for a quick look at the sea turtles who rest on the black sand beach. We got a treat! Two of the turtles were swimming around a pool of water between rock formations. We were able to watch them swim around. It was awesome! We walked over to the beach where three more were napping. Really cool to be able to observe wildlife enjoying the natural environment.
It was time for dinner and we happened to be going past the turn for the Volcano National Park, which was 35 minutes from our ‘home’. We decided to use that National Park pass one more time and dine at the historic Volcano House. The building is a rustic hotel, restaurant and gift shop. It first opened in 1846, and many notable people dined here - The King and Queen and Hawaii, Amelia Earhart, Louis Pasteur, President Franklin Roosevelt, and Mark Twain, just to name a few. As the sunset, we were able to walk behind the building onto the patio and see the red plumes of steam against the night sky again.
A programming note – people ask us if we eat out all the time, or what do we do with our laundry? We usually buy local groceries when we arrive in a new place. We stay at places that offer a kitchenette with a cooktop and fridge. We usually cook breakfast, and pack a mid-morning road trip snack, then eat out for lunch; and, dinner just depends on the day. Some days we cook, some days we eat out. We always have cookies and milk for Trevor, it’s his favorite evening snack lol. Laundry - we go to the laundry mat once a week. On the Big Island, our host has a clothes line so that’s nice.
On Friday, it was laundry day so we went into Pahoa, which is only ten minutes from our cottage. Pahoa has a very laid-back artistic atmosphere. There are Buddhists, there are people with dreadlocks, there is a nudist beach. The people are nice and the laundromat was clean. After doing our laundry we grabbed lunch at the fresh fish market.
It rained all afternoon. After 12 days in Hawaii, we had our first rain out day, that’s pretty good. Our host Babette has a large tank in her yard with a tarp on it. The rain fills the tank, the tarp acts as a filter. She uses this water for all her household things – dishes, laundry, showers, cooking, etc. She said she doesn’t drink it because she worries after the eruption it might not be safe. But it is treated and safe for everything else.
Time to pack the bags and clean out the fridge, we leave for Kauai tomorrow afternoon.
Your friend, B
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