3/3 Take It Easy Day

We woke up to beautiful sunshine. We were really tired yesterday so decided to take it easy today. We stopped downtown to check out the Discovery Center Museum – it was closed again, but we did see a sign that said it would re-open on Saturday so we will try again. We stopped at the Post Office to mail off the last of our postcards and then walked up to the library to see the huge stone on display. The legend goes that this stone (see photo) was brought over to Hawaii by canoe and only those men with Royal blood could lift it – now, it is a lava rock, which would make it lighter than granite, but we’re guessing it weighs at least 500-600 pounds! From there we went to the campus of the University of Hawaii to visit the astronomical/culture center. Unfortunately, the displays were not the best and the planetarium was under renovation. They did have a portable, blow-up planetarium, but you had to sit on the floor during the presentation and that nearly killed us – we are getting old! We drove out of town and down State Road 130 to see where the lava is spilling into the sea. For safety reasons and because they have to man the site from loony people, the viewing times posted on the gate were from 2 PM – 10 PM. Since it was noon, we pulled off to the side of the road and ate our cheese and crackers. We then spotted on the map a nearby scenic route along the shore. It was amazing to see where old lava fields had passed over the road (causing new sections of the road to be carved through or made to go over the lava). The road was interesting as it went from two lanes to one lane with pullouts without any warning several times. We finally looped back to the gated dead end around 2:00. We walked about a half-mile up the road only to discover that you couldn’t see the lava flowing into the ocean. It had moved on down the coast where there are no access roads. Apparently, at night you can see the glows on the hillside, but we had already seen the spectacular glow from the crater in the national park. We did however see the lava that flowed across this road only 6 weeks before (see photo). It was still quite hot – Dave held his hand out from about 10 feet away and thought it was perhaps 500 degrees. You could certainly feel the heat and see the heat waves emanating from it. Unbelievably, people have started building on top of the 1990 lava flow (see photo of house)! The views of the ocean are sweet, the land is cheap and you don’t have to mow the grass! On our way back to town, we stopped at a macadamia nut factory. The orchard was huge – 250,000 trees on 2500 acres! We were given samples of the onion/garlic nuts and chocolate covered nuts – they were both good. Of course, we had to buy some to bring home. We got back into town and decided to have an early dinner and take in a movie. We got to the theatre, which is in a shopping mall area a bit early so walked around and window shopped. We did go into Hilo Hattie’s shop, which sells Hawaiian shirts and dresses. The shirt in the entry area was huge – 200XL! You could use it as a tent! I didn’t have my camera with me, but I will try to stop back today to snap a photo. We saw “Unknown” – it was a tense, car-chase type of movie with lots of twists – very good. I don’t know what we will do tomorrow. We are starting to be ready to come home – we are missing family and friends, but not the weather.