Hawaii 2019 - Day 7

Today we spent the day at the resort.  It was planned that B wanted to see the dolphin in the lagoon,  but she changed her mind, so Lola got up and headed to the lagoon by herself to blog (with better internet) and wait for the show.  The dolphins didn't cooperate very well, but it was still neat, and she got to ask lots of questions to the trainer.  This is a new thing for the dolphins, it took 8 months to get them to go between 2 bridges, and another 8 months to get them into the lagoon.  They aren't used to swimming in such a large, open space like the lagoon.

AA, B and MBM met Lola before breakfast.  AA misread the message Lola sent him and thought she was at the "beach" but instead she was at the "bench", across the lagoon from the beach.  A short walk around the lagoon and they were united.

DD and T were running late and went to get in line at breakfast.  T was upset that they missed the tram but DD motivated him that they could probably run faster than the tram.  And he was right - T ran the entire way to breakfast and DD tried to keep up.  They were both sweaty when they arrived.

After another excellent breakfast, the crew decided it was a good swim day at the pools.  DD wanted to do a small photo shoot for work before hand with AA while the others got started with the slides near the hotel.

 T being a dolphin

After about an hour, it was time to switch pools and walk across the resort to where the "epic slide" was located.  The kids had a great time swimming to and from the slide (under the bridges, "tennis net" according to B and water fall).  They also had a blast diving for rings again - B is getting stronger with her swimming, often only needing to come up for air once before reaching the rings about 30 feet away.

Eventually it was time to make our way to Dolphin Quest where the ladies and T got to meet some dolphins again.  Last time they saw Kona, the dolphin, but she recently had a baby so they got to see Ipo, Nahele and Haukea instead.  They had a great time learning about the dolphins and feeding them fish.

After Dolphin Quest, it was time for showers/baths and some down time in the hotel room.  The kids were promised a couple of games of Mario Kart for their good behaviour. 

Then, it was time for supper at the Italian restaurant again.  This time, the kids were allowed to play with the blocks in the central "games area" with some other kids.  This was a great break for the adults, to let the kids "run free" while the adults were allowed to "adult".  Supper was delicious and then it was back to the hotel room.

Since it was an earlier night (early supper), there was some time to kill so the gang wandered around the hotel and went to the Boat Landing Cantina with hopes of catching a boat ride around the resort.  20 mins turned into 30 with no signs of a boat coming, so the crew "abandoned ship" and took what was left of their drinks back to the hotel room so they could put the kids to bed.

Waiting for the boat

After about an hour, Lola texted MBM checking if they fell asleep.  They did, and hard apparently.  Once everyone was awake, they continued to play MBM's new favourite game on the Switch - Overcooked 2.  Lola really enjoys giving everyone jobs and yelling at them when they aren't doing the right thing in the kitchen - kind of like her mom except her mom doesn't yell...

Hawaii 2019 - Day 6

Today was Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park day.  Our plan was to get to breakfast early.... but that got derailed quickly when we couldn't find T's headphones for the car ride.  After a long search, we still couldn't find them.  Eventually Lola packed up her headphone and away we went. Since this took longer than we expected, breakfast was a longer wait than we expected, and we got to the car over 30 minutes after we wanted to be out of there.

Loading the van, and getting the kids set up with their entertainment, we started our journey to the other side of the island. There are 8 climate zones on the big island and there are only 13 all together in the world. There is no roads on this map, but we went through 4 climate zones including, dry-semi-arid, Summer-dry warm, summer dry-cool and continuously wet.  The drive was very neat as you go over the hills and find yourself with different vegetation as you get to the other side. 

Interesting things along the drive, we passed the army base, that didn't look like much, just a lot of barren ground and shed like buildings all in a clump.  We passed through the protesters along the highway that don't want a telescope built, w drove through Hilo and its neighboring communities, and finally arrived a volcanoes national park.

Once arriving at the park we went to the visitors center to check out what we wanted to do.  We headed to the Sulfur banks where everything didn't go well after that.  The two kids were very scared, as there are danger signs and warnings throughout.  Adults kept the kids safe, but they didn't enjoy it.  And to our surprise T didn't like the smell at all, but he did love a sign that said a guy got burned from getting too close to the edge and fell in the hole.  He talked about that for the rest of the day.

Next stop was the steam vents.  This turned out to be even worse that the sulfur bank hike.  The kids were not happy, especially B.  She was terrified.  Later we found out that she thought it was fake, but once we got there the volcano was real and that was scary.  Her stomach was in a knot and she just turned sour.  Thinking she was going to vomit was the end result.

We got to the steam vents, and to the adults surprise don't remember being able to see the crater from where we were.  It is so beautiful, and we can't wait to get home to look at the photos from that last time we were there as it was 7 years ago, and it has since erupted.  So since the eruption, 10% of the park is still closed, including the all famous lava tubes that MBM and Lola thought were terrifying the last time they were there.  I guess we will have to come back when they open them up again (it might be a while if they were damaged from lava...  We think the crater is bigger than it was before, but I guess that will have to wait until we get home to look at the photos.

We hiked a little to a viewing point, and then headed our way back.  The kids did ok on the walk back, but B still wasn't doing well.  We stopped at the Volcano house for lunch.  MBM and Lola had the best fish we have ever had.  To Lola's surprise once asking the waiter what protein she could have as all the lunch plates had a "it contains gluten" symbol, it was just the macaroni salad that she couldn't eat, all the fish was coated with rice flour.  B had a little nap at the table and then ate a few bites of lunch, but wasn't having it.  The view was amazing out of the restaurant.

After lunch, Lola went to the gift store and the rest walked back to the van, and stopping to go inside the visitor center as we didn't go inside the first time, just looked at the signs on the outside.  It began to rain a little, so we got back into the van, and headed down the Crater Rim Road.  We stopped at the first viewing point.  This was Lolas favorite part.  It was a crater filled with harden lava rock.  People were hiking down in the bottom, next time Lola and MBM want to do that, as it looked so cool, but it was a "challenging" hike and the kids wanted nothing to do with this experience.

So we kept going to Devastation Trail, where a full forest was covered in lava rock (in mounds) in the 1950's.  To our surprise T came on this hike with AA, Lola and MBM.  He really wanted to see a NeNe (which looks like a Canada goose).  Unfortunately we didn't see any NeNe, but he did super on the walk, telling AA and Lola to stay on the path, as he could hear us walking on the rocks....

Back at the van, B and DD chilled waiting for us to do the 1 mile hike.  We headed out of the park and on our way back to the Hotel, B couldn't wait.  It was raining.  The kids both had a short nap, the adults stopped for Starbucks in Hilo (about a 30 minute drive from the park).

The drive was pretty peaceful.

Once we got back to the hotel, we headed straight to the Lagoon grill for some food.  We had way too much food, but the burgers and hot dogs we had were good.

We headed back to the room to put the kids to bed, which went very well.  The adults played some Overcooked on the Switch, and with MBM we are getting really well.  We can't wait to try again tomorrow.

Till tomorrow, Lola.