Today’s journey started as all great journies should: with a hearty breakfast! We headed down to the Hawaiian Style Cafe for their GIANT pancake breakfast. Happy Rob had banana macademia nut pancakes, and I had a side (bigger than my head!) haupia coconut pancake. They also came with eggs and bacon. Pretty yummy!!

We changed our original plans for the day based on weather so that our morning and early afternoon were devoted to one of our fave activities (again!) – snorkeling. We brought our own gear with us so we could go when and where we liked, and it has been great. Today we headed to some beaches that seemed to be mainly locals’ beaches: Richardson Ocean Park and Carlsmith Beach. They were both beautiful, and not overly crowded. Richardson had good visibility and a bunch of fish and some pretty coral, while Carlsmith was much choppier, but we did snorkel with a turtle for a bit, which is always awesome!

After snorkeling we headed back to our place to clean up and make some sandwiches for our sunset picnic tonight, then we headed out to the Mauna Kea Volcano to watch sunset. The access road to Mauna Kea involves a pretty long drive up to the Visitor Center at 9200 feet above sea level, and the temperature dropped over 40 degrees along the way! This year appears to be our year for high altitude travel, with Cusco and Machu Picchu in May and now Mauna Kea! At the Halepohaku visitor center they stop all cars and ask you to 1) acclimate to the altitude for at least 30 minutes and 2) ensure you have a 4WD vehicle before you can go any further. You are also not allowed up the volcano if you have certain health conditions or if you scuba dived in the past 24 hours (luckily we only snorkeled). There is then an additional 8+ mile drive on a mostly unpaved and crazy road up to the summit of Mauna Kea. It was like a roller coaster ride! The lava fields we passed through and the clouds below us made for spectacular scenery. At the summit we ate our picnic dinner and watched the sun set over the clouds 😍. There are 13 telescopes at the top of the summit, each owned by different businesses, non profits, or even countries, including Canada, France, Taiwan, the University of Hawaii, and NASA. We couldn’t use the telescopes as regular members of the public, but some tour groups can. We definitely needed our jackets and fleece tops tonight (and luckily we knew that ahead of time) as we enjoyed God’s light show flex. Incredible! Forgive my inability to discard any of these photos in advance- it was too hard to decide when there were so many beautiful photos!

After sunset we made our way back down the mountain (the rangers stop you and check your car’s brake temperature on the way down!) and back into town. We plan to head into Volcanoes National Park tomorrow, and want to be ready to go in the morning! Thanks for adventuring with us today!