Karen’s Snapshots!

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Bright and early, in the rain before breakfast, Maria and I head over to the Outrigger Keauhou Beach Resort to catch the Grand Circle Island tour bus by Polynesian Adventure Tours; this will be an all day tour of 260 miles around the entire island.  Our driver and tour guide Wayne showed up and to our pleasant surprise, the bus was almost empty–maybe 20 of us on a 60 person bus–cool!  Our first stop of the day was at the Kona Coffee Museum, an interesting place that shares the history and story of the Kona District, which is a 25 mile long area and only coffee grown there can officially be called “Kona Coffee”.  The next stop was at the Punaluu Black Sand Beach were we saw giant green sea turtles come up onto the black sand to bask in the sun and warm up–these turtles are awe-inspiring to look at.   Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is next on the agenda.  While there we have lunch, check out the Jagger Museum, Kilauea Iki Crater, hike 2/10 mile on the Halemaumau Trail, visit the Thurston Lava Tube and view some steam vents. I bypass going to the lava tube because the path down is fairly steep and I feared how long it would talk me to get back with my “moon boot” type cast.  From the dry volcanic landscape, we crossed over into the rain forest landscape and stopped at a orchid nursery to check out some beautiful flowers–who knew there were this many different orchid looks (besides orchid lovers!).  We drove through Hilo, on the east side of the island, and then stopped at Rainbow Falls to enjoy a pretty waterfall.  We then continued south and west around the island through the cowboy country of Parker Ranch, the white man who married the Hawaiian King’s daughter and received a huge land gift from the King.  The land is all in a trust fund now and profits go to the schools of the area.  And the round trip brings us back to Kona under another beautiful ocean sunset.

Some of the pictures were taking as the bus was rolling down the road, so please forgive those shots. 

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