Lift Up Your Hearts!

(Continued from Day 3 - Part 1, which was continued from Day 2, which was continued from Day 1.)

Leaving behind the Waipi`o Valley, we retraced our path and rejoined the Hawaii Belt Road (Route 19), continuing westward before turning south.

Click on the map for more detail.  You will be able to zoom in and out, and move around.

Laupahoehoe Point was a seaside village, but in 1946, twenty-one children and three adults died in a tsunami, and the town was moved to higher ground.

It is now a beautiful park, with a memorial and you-won’t-see-this-on-the-mainland warning signs.

Sugar once dominated Hawaii—and there’s a case to be made that it was as bad for Hawaii as it is for our teeth.^*  But the only signs remaining are ruins, and an occasional sugarcane plant left to grow wild.  We drove through some of this old sugar land on our way to ’Akaka Falls State Park for a nice hike and some good-looking water.

On our way back to Route 19, we stopped at the Woodshop Gallery and Café; the wood products were interesting, but not as interesting as the homemade ice cream.

Soon we deviated once again from the main road, on for a four-mile “scenic route.”  Trust me, it’s all scenic here, but this road also led to the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden.

The story began in 1977, when fifty-six year old Dan Lutkenhouse looked at a dump—a property “so overgrown that a machete was needed to walk only a few feet through it, and filled with old cars, machinery, appliances and trash of all kinds” —and dreamed a garden for the world to enjoy.

We did, very much indeed.

Behive ginger

Mule's foot fern

Persian shield

I don't know what it is, but I love the two purples.

What's Hawaii without a warning sign?

Don't you think the cannonball tree is more deserving of a danger sign?

Perhaps we lingered overlong in the Garden.  We had no promises to keep, but miles to go before we could sleep.  Plan A had been to spend the night in Hilo, but we had not reckoned on the Merrie Monarch Festival, a popular hula celebration and contest.  Extremely popular.  There was not a hotel room to be had.

Plan B took us all the way to Volcano, and the Kilauea Lodge, which would give us a good start on the next day’s exploration of Volcanoes National Park.  Even there, the only “room” available was the Pi’i Mauna House, with capacity for six (or several more) and a price tag to match.  We had reservations, and therefore no worries about arriving late, but if you’re spending that kind of money, it’s nice to do more than crash into bed.

So we quickened our pace, driving through Hilo without stopping at any of the tempting museums.  There always has to be a reason to return, right?

Not that Hilo was without adventure.

Let me tell you something about the Hawaiian language.  It is expressed using a mere 12 letters (plus a left single quote, which represents a glottal stop).  This extreme efficiency plays havoc with my brain, especially while navigating.

Navigating through Hilo went fine until we found ourselves at an unclear intersection and guessed wrong.  The development went something like this:  I catch a glimpse of a street sign as we pass by, noting that it begins with K.  I look down at the map.  Great.  Half the streets in Hilo begin with K.  Porter calls out another name while I’m scanning the map, but his guess at the pronunciation doesn’t eliminate much.  I decide on a route to take, but by the time I’m done struggling through the syllables we’ve passed it.   Waianuenue, Komohana, Ponahawai, Punahele, Kapiolani, Kinoole, Kilauea, Kukuau, Hualalai, Panaewa, Kaiulani, Kekaulike, Wailuku ... under pressure, they all look alike.

We have friends who keep telling us we would be perfect contestants on The Amazing Race.  I say, we’ve been married for 36 years, and I’d like to keep it that way, thank you.

But we were soon safely on the way to Volcano, reluctantly sticking to Route 11 without diverting down 130 to Hawaii’s newest land, created as lava flows into the sea.  But we had seen that from the helicopter.  You might think that some compensation for having your home overcome by lava would be gaining acreage, but the State claims all new land.  I wonder how they write homeowner’s insurance policies in Hawaii.  What if your house is untouched, but cut off from the rest of the world?  See the roads to nowhere?

We checked into Pi’i Mauna House and set off to find Thai food for dinner (successful) and a view of the glowing lava flowing into the ocean (unsuccessful).  I’m not certain we were looking in exactly the right place, anyway, but apparently we were able to see lava flow in the crater because its path to the sea had been blocked.  You get one or the other, or neither, but not both.  Unless it's a massive eruption of the kind no one but someone whose home is safely elsewhere wants to see.

The obvious solution was to return to our house and enjoy the hot tub before retiring.