Sunset Feb 23, 2013 from near Energy Labs, Kona

We had a pleasant lunch at Jolene’s in Honokaa, on an attempt to visit Hilo (which we were told was being deluged), via Waipio Valley lockout and the excellent gift shop gallery.

At Hapuna Beach, on the Kohala Coast, north of Kona, I did a bare minimum amount of body surfing, while Terry schmoozed the locals.

A French guy snapped the photograph of Terry and I standing near but not in the Puako beach cove. This links to what is probably the same exact spot. We weren’t sure if we were at the famous Beach 69 or what. We weren’t sure if we could indeed walk to the famous petroglyphs in about 15 minutes (yes!) and instead drove all the way around and entered near the Fairmont Orchid and Mauna Lani hotels.

I joked that not surfing, not touch-football (like 35 years before, on family holiday trip to Kapilua Bay), not frisbee, not tennis, not golf, not scuba, not ziplining but car touring was our island sport of choice — so glad I pushed for the little Camry and not acquiesced to the upgrade of the clunky Ford AWD, which had a certain Sysyphus or Atlas feel, especially with gas prices what they were — I wondered if they offered the “upgrade” because we switched to a 700-mile package for around $400 rather than a “free miles” package for around $500). Coming home from our day trip Terry started to grill me about not being anywhere cool for the sunset — we were 40 minutes from home while Big Gassy had about 20 minutes left in his tank. So I felt cool that I whipped little Camry into the entrance to NELHA the energy lab and indeed found a little strip of sand and tide pools and ocean to observe the above. (I actually took no photos, zero, zilch null set bagels on this trip!)