Just got on the shuttle to take us from PHL to our home in Wilmington!  After only 11 hours in the air and 6 hours of waiting time. We left Thu 3 PM HST and arrived Philadelphia Fri  2:30 PM ET.

Now for the ride home on I-95S.  On a Friday afternoon with beach traffic and rush hour! Certainly glad I’m not driving!

Oh, and no geocaches so far today.  We may have remedy that later.

We arrived at DFW after an uneventful flight.  After the walk from C Terminal to D Terminal we stopped at Cool River Cafe for breakfast. After passing up on McDonalds and Starbucks.  Real breakfast!  Sit down!

In 3 hours we’ll begin the last leg to Philadelphia.

Arrived in Honolulu on schedule at 4 PM.  Now to charge up the mobile phones for the longer 2nd leg to DFW.  Depart Honolulu at 5:40 PM HST.

Joyce is out checking on what we can get for dinner to take along.  Hopefully it will be something tasty.

The airline is now calling for volunteers because they are oversold.  Nope, not interested!

Up at 5:30 AM as usual! Had our coffee and breakfast on the lanai for the last time.  Took a few last photos of sunrise and clouds. Then started the packing and checking to make sure we had everything before taking our leave of Flower Hill.

We left about 8 AM  to return to Akaka Falls to see if the sky would cooperate and provide some blue instead of gray for photo ops. Yea, there was blue sky and whit puffy  clouds!  Took some photos and got some steps too.  AND, we were able to get aan earth cache too–#1 for the day.

Next we headed for anothet nearby beach park to check out another waterfall.  Not so impressive, but took some photos anyway.  Joyce went looking for a cache while Gary did the photo thing.  No luck on finding the ccache.

Still in search of another cache we returned for the third time to the shave ice spot to look once more for the cache that’s supposed to be there.  No luck even though there were only a few people around at 11 AM.

Then on to Rainbow Falls for one last photo op. No rainbow at 11:30 in the morning.  Too late!

Gary, still in need of a Hawaiin shirt, took the advice of our hosts and shopped in Walmart.

One last try to locate an interesting Post Office to photograph was a bust.  It was time to get to the airport, return the rental car and check in. After passing security we had lunch in the waiting area to use up the last of our food items.

Almost readyto board  the flight for Honolulu.

After we thought about some, we decided to try for a cache again today.  We returned to the shave ice establishment and still too many things going on to try for that cache.

We decided to try for one at the Pepeekeo lighthouse located down toward the ocean from our guest house.  It was a remote possibility. After locating the public access to the shore, we made our way to the rocky ledge and had a walk through tall grasses and over rocks and trees to see the lighthouse.  The cache was located closer to the public access, but it had been moved and the new coordinates didn’t seem to point to any logical location. We abandoned this one too.

We had on last hope at the big gear on a pedestal at the main road.  Fortunately we had success here and found our only cache today.

Back at the guest house we did take showers, got out boarding passes, made dinner and enjoyed the lanai one last evening on the Big Island.  Enjoyed another pineapple courtesy of our hosts.

So, we were up early this morning.  After some discussion, a quick breakfast and morning coffee, we made a plan to return to the Volcano NP and hike across the Kilauea Iki crater.

We left the guest house at 7 AM for the 45 minute drive to Volcano NP.  Got there a little before 8 and stopped briefly at the visitor center to see if we could get a map.  No luck as they open at 9AM.  We did get another copy of the brief description map of the areas in the park, but no details about the Kilauea Iki trail.

No matter.  We drove to the parking lot for the hike and were on the trail about 8:45 AM after a false start because G had left his sunglasses in the car and had to make a 0.3 mi return trip to get’em!  As it turned out, didn’t need them after all.  It had rained earlier and was cloudy the entire time we were hiking.  Of course, that made for better hiking than full blazing sun, but made for lousy pictures. Took a lot anyway and hoping that post-processing can make something of gray sky, gray lava and little green on the sides!

This was a very interesting hike.  We took the trail in reverse and had a nice walk down the 400 feet through the rain forest into the crater floor.  Once there, the trail was maked by Ahu (stacked rocks).  We saw steam vents up close, the smallest plants growing in the harsh conditions of the lava and plenty of broken lava in many shapes and forms.  Photographed quite a few and maybe some will turn into photos….

The rain forest part of the trail both going down and coming back up the 400 feet in elevation at the end were muddy in spots.  We were able to work around most of the puddles with a little ingenuity.  The trek down through the rain forest was more interesting because there seemed to be more gradual descent with changing vegetation along the way.

The walking on the crater floor was really very easy.  After crossing the crater, the trail back up was across some rougher terrain and it was more difficult walking and climbing.

After returning to the top, we had bananas and Kashi bars for a snack.  Then began our drive back to the guest house.  As we got back into Hilo, Joyce remembered that we still needed to find a Hawaiian shirt for Gary.  We looked for the store recommended in the guidebook our hosts have available, but the Hilo Hotties stores were out of business.  We’ll have to check with our hosts for more information on this topic.

We drove by the Hilo lighthouse and stopped to take it’s photo again this time with blue sky in the background.  Then, finally we decided to have a Hawaiian shave ice treat at the little restaurant just down the road from our guest house.  Gary had mango and banana while Joyce had guava and passion fruit.  Very tasty!  We looked for a geocache at this place, but were unable to search very much due to the number of people present.  So far, no caches today.  We’ll be out again to find at least one!

finally back at our house around 2:30 PM.  We need showers, aspirin and a bit more to eat.  Probably popcorn and whatever….

We’re keeping an eye out for blue sky over the Akaka waterfall hoping to improve upon the photos take when it was cloudy the other day.  No luck so far!

Later, we plan on dinner out.

Today we got an early start (around 7:15 AM HST) because we planned a long drive around the Big Island.  We started to the south again, but stayed on Highway 11 past the Volcano NP entrance and kept on going!

Our #1 cache for the day was found at Wellington Wonderland a state park with a beach. Not much to speak of.

We stopped at Naalehu Town for Portuguese malasadas at Punalu’u Bake Shop and a geocache.  We were successful finally with #2 geocache for the day located in a Banyan tree. The malasadas were nothing special when compared to Tex Drive In’s that we had the other day.

We drove to South Point (Ka Lae) the southern most point in the US.  Two objectives:  1) you guessed it a geocache #3 and 2) a lighthouse.  The N 18 degrees 54 minutes  W 155 degrees 40 minutes.  We took some surf photos, lava photos and a couple of signs/monuments.

Then we made our way to Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historic Park.  This was formerly a sacred place for the Hawaiian Royalty.  It was a very small park and took about 15 minutes to see it.  Cache #4 was found just outside the park on the way out.  A plastic bag in a hole in a fence post!  Pretty lame!

We visited the other Painted Church on Painted Church Road near Keokea Town.  Took a few photos for rural architecture.  No cache here.  Then on to Holualoa Town via the old winding road (Mamalahoa Highway) to get a cache in an old post office building.  It took us a few tries to get the mailbox open and retrieve cache #5 for the day.  A good caching day so far!

Continuing on to Queen K highway for gas and through the lava fields of a very old lava flow.  Then we turned off Queen K Highway and headed for Waimea to get a cache that we’d missed previously.  It started to rain just as we were getting to the Parker Ranch where the Camp Tarawa Marine Monument and the geocache were located.  Joyce hunted for #6 cache of the day.  Then we drove home sometimes through heavy rain.

It was about 5:30 when we got home and had Hawaiian dinner (Spam, corn, rice and pineapple and pears).  Watched a little TV and called it a night around 10 PM.  Thinking about an early rise to go and walk the crater in Volcano NP on Wednesday.

We were having a leisurely morning after the long day yesterday which was interrupted by our host Karen bringing some fresh bananas from their farm!  They were pretty tasty just picked from the tree!  We also have had our 3rd pineapple courtesy of our hosts.  We’ve enjoyed it for dinner a couple of times and had it again for lunch today.  More coming for dinner tonight!

After breakfast we headed out for our first planned activity of the day–the Hawaiian Tropical Botanical Gardens located just down the road from where we’re staying.  See www.htbg.com for some info.  We got there about 9 AM opening hour and stayed until 11:30.  Lots of tropical flowers and other plants to photograph.   Tried to find a geocache just outside the gardens on a public path down to the ocean without success. However, our 1st cache of three for the day was on a bridge on the Old Mamalahoa Highway which is now a scenic byway.  Reminded us of the Road to Hana with all it’s one lane bridges.

On our list was to get a smoothie at the local “best” place on Hawaii…. What’s Shakin’!   Well, Joyce had packed our lunch and the smoothie spot was just a little ways up from the gardens.  We stopped in and ordered a Bananarama (Joyce) and a Paradise Passion (Gary).  They were really flavorful with lots of island fruits.  Ate our bread, cheese and salami, fresh pineapple (see above) and ended with Nutter Butters for dessert.

Then it was on to the famous and largest waterfalls in Hawaii–the Aka’ka waterfalls.  This was in a state park that costs $5 to park.  The walk was about 0.5 mile on a sidewalk trail.  It had a lot of ups (stairs) and downs that contributed to the 34 stairs on Gary’s fitbit and 35 on Joyce’s.  There was another waterfall in the park, but it was not very photogenic because of all the overgrowth that covered it up from the viewing points.  We moved on to the Aka’ka where good photography was possible.  Gary set up his tripod in the best spot and got out the neutral density filter so he could use a slow shutter speed to make the water flow silky smooth.  Look fine on the camera’s small screen, but will have to see it on the computer to know if the photos were successful.  (That’s a project for back in Wilmington). We were successful in finding our second cache in a guardrail just outside the state park and an uphill walk to get it.  Of course, it was downhill to the car.  Half of what Gary prefers….downhill both ways!

When we finished at the waterfalls it was only 3:30 and we weren’t hungry and decided to go to the Japanese Gardens in Hilo on Banyan Street.  We’d been by it a couple of days ago and thought it looked interesting.  Besides, there were two caches there.  We only found one, out 3rd for the day, because the other had gone missing and been temporarily archived.  The gardens were very different than most other Japanese gardens we’ve visited.  Lots of bridges, pools and lanterns.  No Zen garden!  An imposing black cloud suggested that maybe we should conclude our visit and head home.  It was about 5:30 and seemed like a good time to rest up from the day’s activities on the lanai.

Home about 5:45 and Joyce assembled the dinner while Gary poured the cold white wine to enjoy on the lanai.

Another nice day in Hawaii!