Well, our drive today started from our guest house Flower Hill near the town of Pepe’ekeo about 12 miles north of Hilo. It is a small ranch (farmette) off the beaten path (good roads)! We took Highway 19 North through the following towns/villages:
Honomu
Hakalau
Papa aloa
Laupahoehoe
Honoka’a
Waimea
In Waimea we took Highway 190 , We stopped hoping to get a geocache at the Parker Ranch Marine memorial, but were unsuccessful. Then we continued on 190 to a “Y” in the road and took the left fork. It was Saddle Road, no number! It did connect up with Highway 200 near the military reservation Pahakaloa where the army conducts tank training. Highway 200 is named the Daniel K. Inouye after Hawaii’s famous senator. We turned left and continued looking for caches along the way. There was one at a state park about 5 miles down the road. It was a very nice state park with restrooms, picnic tables, playground equipment and cabins that could be rented. We found the cache! #2 for the day!
We made our way to Hilo and the Safeway to fill up the rental car before exchanging it for another at the Avis facility at the airport. The Ford Focus had some kind of mechanical problem that caused it to shudder when starting from a dead stop. Could be transmission or tranxaxle, but we didn’t feel comfortable keeping it for the week we were on the Big Island since we planned to travel to some lesser traveled places looking for geocaches, waterfalls and volcanos!
On the way from Hilo to the guest house, we decided to check out the webcam cache that was at the tsunami museum and included the lighthouse on Hilo Bay in the picture. Our daughter Jolene was the first to respond (she was awake at 10 pm (4 PM HST) and had her phone handy) to access the museum’s web site and find us in the picture and make a copy to email us so we can claim the cache! #3 for the day!
We completed our 100 mile trip around Mauna Kea volcano without ever actually seeing it. In and out of clouds and rain most of the trip. Had a little sunshine and a few glimpses of blue sky along the way. Drove through ranch country.
After returning we collected the white pineapple our hosts offered and began the process of cutting it according to Aunt Janet’s instruction to go with our dinner. I think we’ll stay in again this evening. At 6:30 PM HST it is raining again…..