If you haven’t seen the video of me skydiving, here is the link.

https://youtu.be/7uhsyIehwgU?si=epjjuZQ_07jmO7m7

And here’s Ryan’s

https://youtu.be/hJaRkgxicMc?si=aJ8cyXt4mzKW5eue

Yesterday morning we went over to the opposite side of the crater we’ve been looking at all week. Between snorkeling with the mantas Wednesday night, and skydiving Thursday morning, we were both pretty tired.

I got a few pretty pictures before a cloud came and sat on the crater.

We puttered around the park for a little while and then went into Hilo to get some lunch.

Last night was spent eating leftovers, doing laundry, and packing up our loot.

Today we drove over to Upolu airport on the north tip of the island for a skydiving… Tour? Adventure? Sanity test?

And it was incredible.

No, I probably won’t do it again, but since we each did a tandem jump, it wasn’t terribly difficult. I didn’t even have to actually jump out of the plane. The guy I was strapped to handled getting us out the door.

After putting us into our harnesses, we were given instructions for what to do. I got to get out of the plane first, so I had fewer instructions than Ryan did. My guy said, ” hips forward, head and legs back, like a banana.” And, “You’ll put your feet on the step and I’ll push us out of the plane.” Ryan got all of the banana stuff plus a bunch regarding exactly HOW to get out of the plane since he was in the back of it. The flight up took longer than the descent and Ryan got some really beautiful views of the green side of the island. I’m short, and I was tucked in next to the pilot’s seat, so I couldn’t see as well.

Putting my feet on the step was a little more difficult than I had expected due to the tight quarters, but I think other than a quick, “Oh God” that came out of my mouth when the door flew up, I comported myself rather well.

You move so fast before the chute opens that it’s really breathtaking, and then the chute is opened and everything calms down. Ryan says they tumbled a bit when they came out, but since I was first I didn’t see that.

There was a man mowing the grass at the airport and he mowed in some art – a smilie face and mele kalikimaka. That was a fun touch.

There will be a video or two, I’m not sure, by Saturday night. When we have the link, I’ll be sure to send it out.

Oh, and the oldest person my guy has ever taken up was 88. The only thing a person needs, is to be able to lift their legs up like for sitting.

That, and probably some sort of mental impairment that makes them think that jumping out of a perfectly good, fully functional plane is a good idea.

Yesterday started at about 4:45 am and ended about 10 pm. A long day to be sure, and spectacular on both ends.

First we drove back over to Sea Arch in the park for sunrise over the ocean.

Whatever internet site Ryan used said first light was at 6:19, but I estimate they were off by about 30 minutes as these pictures were taken before 6:00. Sunrise was around 6:45. There were a few clouds napping on the ocean, which wasn’t ideal, but it was still beautiful.

These are a few that I took with my iPhone. Ryan has his Nikon, and I’m sure he’s got some that are really amazing. Watching him taking pictures was kind of like watching a kid going to a carnival. He was having trouble picking which view to photograph when!

Afterwards, we went back to the house for breakfast and then across the island again to Kona for lunch. It’s about two hours from Volcano if you take the shortcut instead of going around.

We found a delicious lunch in the resort area near the water’s edge.

We had real food too, I just didn’t take pictures of it. Fresh catch was mahi mahi and vegetables. The fish was cooked to perfection.

We had some time to kill, and wandered up the street doing some shopping and hunting for beach towels since none were provided by our rental.

From there we went out to the harbor for our “Manta Adventure.” I have wanted to see a manta since I read “The Girl of the Sea of Cortez” by Peter Benchley when I was a teenager.

Our captain was Captain Bill. He’s been doing manta tours, fishing excursions, and whale watching for more than 30 years. The crew was Kevin and Collum. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take pictures of the mantas because I had to hold onto the viewing board, but beforehand I did get a couple of pictures of Ryan snorkeling.

They use blue and purple lights to attract the phytoplankton, which in turn attracts the mantas. There are 343 mantas in the area that have been identified and named. The largest is Bertha Ray. Her wingspan is not quite 19 feet from tip to tip. The youngest ray doesn’t have a name yet and is only 8 weeks old. The pups are born with wingspans of 3-4 feet. A manta weighs about 100 per foot of wingspan, and mama mantas give birth and immediately the pups are on their own. Gestation is 13 months, and at the end the mama will breach the water and do massive belly flop to break the gestational sac. That must be an incredible site! Nobody knows how long mantas live yet as they’ve only been studied for the past 67 years. The assumption right now is that due to gestational length, they live between 80 and 100 years.

I got to see 4 different mantas. Two of them came in together and were almost dancing as they fed. The mantas that hang out around Kona are unique in that they will do what they call a barrel roll. They come up to the lights and then skim close to the surface before swimming off again. I was within inches of them and they’re really amazing. They can change the markings on their backs to communicate with each other, so the only way to know who is who is by the spot pattern on their bellies.

I think we were in the water about 30-45 minutes. I’m not really sure.

Since we weren’t able to take pictures, I’ll be hunting for a good one or two while we’re here to bring home. Now that I’ve seen some up close, I have an idea of what I’m looking for.

Yesterday we wandered down the coast to the south tip of the island. It was hot, dry, windy, and beautiful.

On the way to the point, we stopped and got some pictures

Ryan got to do a tiny bit of off road driving in the area near the green sand beach.

Unfortunately, it was late enough in the day that the parking area to hike down to the beach was full; although given how annoyed I was by the wind pelting me with dust, that may have been the universe telling me to not try to do the 2.25 mile hike each way to the beach. So we opted to not do that.

On the drive back up from the point we stopped at a little farm. It was cooler and not windy, which went a long way toward soothing my nerves. We wandered around and saw some ducks and a few re-homed parrots. They were sampling their macadamia nuts, so we had some while there.

One of the interesting things about the farm was their aquaponic system. They have some tilapia in a tank. And since fish poop, they then send that water down a pipe to fertilize their plants in the greenhouse. There are a couple of “rivers” with rafts of seedlings using that water and then it’s pumped back over to the tank with the fish. There was a sign explaining how it works that Ryan took a picture of so we’ll be able to go back and read it later.

After that the day was mostly just driving. We continued on the road that goes around the island until the outskirts of Kona where we took a shortcut across the island back home.

There was one spot where we got to drive where the map said there wasn’t a road, but that was just a fun side note.

And then after surviving rush hour in Hilo, we were home for the day.

We arrived in Hilo around 8:15 pm HST, which is just after midnight Minnesota time for those of you keeping track. After picking up the Jeep from the rental car place, we were on our way out to Volcano Village where our little airbnb loft is located.

About 45 minutes from Hilo, Volcano is a town that is mostly obscured by the vegetation. We spent this morning starting to get oriented to the our new surroundings. Since we didn’t stop at a grocery store last night, the first order of business was breakfast. We went over to Vocanos National Park where there’s a lodge overlooking Kalua Pele crater (part of Kilauea). Breakfast was not terribly exciting, but Ryan had papaya with his and really enjoyed it. I stuck with somewhat less adventurous fare of yogurt and toast. I want to kind of ease into the local food scene.

The view was terrific when we got there at around 7:30 am. With the sun not very high overhead, the steam vents were visible everywhere. By the time we thought to take pictures of it though, the sun was higher and the steam vents were no longer visible. We’ll go back and take pictures another day.

Next stop was a grocery store. We drove about halfway back to Hilo and found a natural foods store with some bulk items etc., and then we went to a ‘regular’ grocery store that had everything else. There we picked up the requisite pineapple along with other staples we need for our stay.

Back to Volcano to put our food in the fridge and freezer (the ice cream was already melting and we were only about 20 minutes away), and then we headed over to a little bake and art sale. We were expecting something along the lines of a craft fair combined with a bake sale, but it turned out to be two ladies who set up a canopy every Saturday with some of their wares. One bakes and makes jellies, and also some sewn items, the other paints and does stained glass. It was really a treat chatting with them. After that we wandered over to Volcano Art Gallery and saw some truly amazing stuff. Paintings, photographs, wood sculptures, jewelry… well, you get the idea!

Now it is about 3:00 pm, and we’ve stopped for a bit. Having a snack and getting ready to peruse the brochures of all the activities available to us on the island. Our stargazing tour rescheduled for Monday night due to clouds, so we have a few more days to get adjusted to the time change. We’ve made reservations for dinner at 6:15 at the local “fancy place,” which is part of yet another lodge/resort/hotel/spa in the area.

Time for short nap, and then dinner…

Being directionally challenged as I am, I have no real idea of what direction is what. Ryan tells me we spent most of yesterday on the East side of the island. Since he is NOT directionally challenged, I take his word for it.

We got to see the steam venting off the crater yesterday morning! The mist burned off relatively quickly, and we were treated to a view very similar to the one we saw on Saturday.

Those photos would have worked better if I’d stood in the same spot when taking them, but you get the general idea.

After going back to the house for breakfast, and then back again for our long pants for stargazing, we were off to the Hilo area. We had decided to visit the botanic gardens and a vanilla plantation before going to the meet up spot for the stars. We were scraped off for probably 30 minutes on an “old hippy” selling tea off the side of the road. Everything they sell is hand harvested and processed. He had a basket of tea that he was de-leafing for what would become green tea, and off to the side were trays of hibiscus seeds, drying in the sun. It was a lot of fun chatting with him and sampling tea.

After that we went the rest of the way to the botanic gardens (The Hawaii Tropical Bioreserve and Garden). After a VERY steep climb down a ramp, it leveled out mostly and we were able to look around us more.

There were so many different orchids! We took pictures of a few, and then there were just too many to keep up with!

A few really pretty waterfalls, and then down to the edge of the island where the ocean crashed against the Twin Rocks. I’m not sure why they’re called twins. Legend has it that the island was being invaded and needed protecting, so the chief asked for volunteers. Some young lovers said they’d do it, so they went down to the beach while everyone else stayed at home overnight (on pain of death). The next morning when the the chief went to check on them and found them turned into two large, mostly separated, rocks. The chief declared that anyone trying to get past them with the water churning around them would die trying to get to shore. The lovers, and their offspring guard the beach to this day, fending off invaders with the violence of the waters around them.

And then there was the excruciating climb back to the top. They had benches on the side all the way up, but I didn’t dare sit down for fear that going the rest of the way would then be much harder!

After that, we found the beach area the old guy with the tea told us about during out chat. We sat there and ate our sandwiches, and watched the tide start to come in.

It was about 3:45 when we finally headed for the vanilla plantation and realized that it closed at 3:00! However, it was on our way to the star gazing spot, so we decided to go anyway, just in case. Maybe the 3:00 pm closing time was only for tours? No, they do actually close at 3:00, but the door was open so we went in and even though they really were actually closed, they were ok with us wandering around the shop, asking questions, and of course, buying their wares. That plantation is the only vanilla plantation in the United States!

Nearing 5:00, we headed toward the meeting spot for stargazing and were treated to some interesting views along the way. While on the hillside of the plantation, it felt like we were in the mountains of Colorado. Until we were able to see the ocean again. And then it was sort of like New Mexico, Southern Colorado, and parts of Arizona. And then! It was like the rolling hills of Nebraska, except the road didn’t cut through them in a flat manner, it was more of a tilt, so “sideways Nebraska.”

The meetup spot for stargazing turned out to be a lava field. It looked like an explosion of lava rock, and was incredibly surreal in the fading sunlight. We were there nearly an hour early, which gave us time to put on our long pants, sweatshirts, and jackets. Jupiter was the first “star” to make an appearance, even while the glow from the fading sunset was behind us. I tried to take a picture, tried looking at it with my binoculars, but without a tripod, that was an abject failure. The planet looked like a heart rate monitor run amok with all the movement from my arm!

Shortly before everyone was to arrive, our guide, James, called. He had decided to move the spot to a place about 20 minutes away which was grassy instead of rocks. So we drove over there.

And the stars. There were so many of them visible! We were on the side of Maura Kea, which is designated a level 2 on the Bortle scale (a 9 level scale that measure the night sky’s brightness in a particular location). Level 1 is the absolute darkest on Earth. Our guide was previously an “analog astronaut,” which is a fancy way of saying he got to play at being an astronaut living on Mars. There’s a NASA set up in Hawaii where they try to simulate conditions people would need to live in on Mars to work out some kinks before we all actually head that direction. He’s also an astrophotographer, and brought out his green laser pointer to show us things like the Zodiac constellations which were visible, as well as where Hilo and Kona were in relation to where we were. And then the fun stuff started. He set up his star tracker with his camera so we could see the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies, as well as the Orion and Running Man nebulas. We could actually sort of see the Andromeda galaxy without the camera, well, some of us could. It was a very faint blurry spot which could be seen out of out of the corner of the eye while looking at a nearby star. I might have seen it? There were a lot of somewhat blurry stars out there!

And then finally, extended exposure pictures of us with the Milky Way. (coming soon – I don’t have the link to download those yet!)

Interestingly enough, the crater outside Volcano House (where we had breakfast the other day), looks remarkably similar to the Grand Canyon in some places. I’ve never seen the bottom of the Grand Canyon, but the sides of the crater show layers and layers of rock and color up prettily in the sunrise. However, yesterday, the entire crater was blanketed in mist and rainbows.

Yesterday we spent the day in the park. We started with that first crater, and from there went to the Ha’akulamanu (Sulpher Banks).

They weren’t terribly strong. I don’t want to think about what that might mean. Here we saw what the acid from the volcano can do to neatly stacked stones (it turns them into a pile of rubble), some orchids which were imported to the state from Asia in the sixties, and of course, suffer. It reminded me of an old Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock encounter a large rock, or side of a hill, completely covered with sulfur. I described the episode to Ryan and he says he thinks it’s the one where Kirk fights the Gorn. Some kind of lizard humanoid battles with Kirk there.

At this point it was almost 9 am, and a ranger suggested we go directly to Nahuku, which is the Thurston lava tube, since it was Sunday and guaranteed to be really busy. So we drove the 2 or so miles over to the tube. This is a partly sanitized for consumption lava tube with lights installed and higher ceilings, snuggled deep inside the rainforest.

The tube’s walking surface was very uneven, and with all the rain, had lots of lurking puddles. I was very grateful for my hiking boots more than once, as I stumbled, in spite of the light, as I fell into yet another depression filled with water. My tennis shoes are waterproof, but they don’t do anything if the water goes up over the tops!

We climbed the stairs out of the tube, which ends right after the photo on the left, and made our way back to the car across the top of the tube in the rainforest.

Since we were already on Crater Rim Drive, we kept going and saw… you guessed it, craters!

And, there’s a lava flow from 1974:

OK, not EXACTLY the same age as I am, the flow was in July. But I can now safely say that I am older than rocks!

The craters all blurred together after that, except for one which is so old that it’s covered entirely by trees and vegetation. The others were all stark and barren by comparison.

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The Ocean!

It was misty most of the time we were on the mountain, and even as we came down a bit toward the cliffs next to the ocean, but not exactly cold. Just wet and a little breezy.

We were going to hike up the .7 mile to see the petroglyphs, but my knee started to seize and there was… well, a storm coming!

And then finally, after nearly being run off the road by an overly anxious park ranger (he even turned his lights on to force us into a pull out!), we saw the State Bird, the Nene (nay-nay)

And went to the nation’s furthest south winery:

The wine was… like most winery wine. Young, strange and in some cases, way too sweet.

But it is now TODAY! And I must leave to see if we can catch the sun on the crater.

Since this is for our anniversary, we decided to upgrade our very normal human tickets for first class seats for the flight. Because of this, we are now sitting in the Delta Sky Club lounge while we wait for our flight to board!

We’re about an hour away from boarding time, so we’re hanging out, eating “free” food and drinking “free” beverages. I’m slightly appalled with myself as it is only 10:00 am and I have already had a mimosa to calm my nerves. Entrance is only allowed to this elite location if you are first class internationally or for long haul, OR if you have a credit card that grants you access. I’m not sure if there is a large volume of people who are willing to spring for first class for their entire family (I.e., screaming children) or if the super special credit card grants family access. I’m really surprised at the number of people in here regardless! There was a man when we came in who paid $50 on top of using a somewhat special credit card to get in, but I’m not sure that the chairs are comfy enough to warrant that price. Maybe the abundance of free booze makes up for it?