Hamakua Coast and Mauna Kea

In the morning we had a delicious breakfast of papayas, lychee, and graham crackers.  We did our best with no well stocked stores.  Anyway, we cleaned up and headed out for one more small hike on the Desolation trail:

 Next stop was Akaka.  It was much hotter than the day we went before, but beautiful as always.  After Akaka we had a delicious lunch and malasadas at Tex's in Honokaa:

 After Tex's we drove to Waipio.  The kids appreciated the hill:

 Phil and Meags rented a Jeep just for this occasion so most piled in the Jeep for the drive down.  Rob, Tucker, and I thought we would just jog down quickly and meet up with them.  It was a longer down than I had expected and my quads sympathized with Court's (her downhill leg of the RTO).  Anyway we made it down to them just as everyone was ready to head back up.  We ALL rode up:

(where we hiked to on the Waimanu trail:

From Waipio we headed home for supper.  We decided to go up to Mauna Kea for star gazing.  But we were super nervous because clouds were covering the island.  Even the beach was clouded in.  The drive up is so spectacular and the road is so windy.  I really appreciated the new freeway on the saddle road.  Anyway, it was super cloudy and then suddenly we were above them!  It was really cool and nice and clear.  From the observatory some of us did the quick hike up the hill to watch the sunset.  Beautiful.  You really get a whole different perspective of the Island from up there.  Mauna Loa is MASSIVE compared to Hualalai.  Weird.

 Tucker, Meg, and Anders happened to find a geocache box in the rocks.  Pretty cool.  All the glory with none of the hard work:

 Remember this advice:

 We all had a great time, but it was slightly sad that it was a full moon.  Not the best for star gazing, but it was fun to see the rings around Saturn and the craters on the moon.  This is definitely going to be on the agenda again for the next Hawaii trip.