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Sam and Lorinda at the Big Island, Hawaii
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 The main office at Kona Village |
 Our halle (house) |
 We got Leid! then sat down and did nothing for a long time. |
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 Just outside the door of our halle |
 Taken from the deck of our halle |
 Looking right from the deck. |
 Scouting out the neighborhood. |
 Dressing up for dinner |
 Sunsets like this are commonplace. We could have taken pictures like this just about every day. |
 Wahoo! Breakfast! We got up early every morning. Not that we wanted to, but the damn Nene's erupted every morning at exactly 6:12 am. Being the state bird, we couldn't even kill them no matter how much they deserved it. In just a few days we got used to being in bed before 9 pm and getting up for breakfast. |
 Neighbors |
 More neighbors |
 Getting that much-needed vitamin D. |
 Heading out... |
 Way out you could see dolphins and big fish swimming below the kayak. |
 Laundry day. |
 Right behind the laundry shack. |
 Our halle is across the bay. |
 Dinner ! |
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 The turtles were all over the beach. We saw these at night. |
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 We went to the Hawaiian Botanical Garden north of Hilo on the east side of the island. |
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 This place is a real life jungle. Every step of the way we would see some amazing plant we had never seen before. |
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In addition to the blood red color, these leaves about about 6 feet long.
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 There were bigger leaves around, but they were off the trail. |
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 Driving north just outside the garden. |
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 We got soaked in the Botanical Garden. the only safe place was the Jeep. |
We drove our little Jeep to the top of Moana Kea, the tallest mountain on earth. At least that's what all the posters around the island say. It isn't the highest, just the tallest. There are 13 observatories on top sponsored by countries from around the world. The high altitude is above more than 90% of the air junk that gets in the way of most (lower elevation) observatories. We were there for the first snow iof the year and got to see the local kids filling their truck beds full of snow. They then race back to the beach at Hilo and build snowmen to the amazement of the people getting off the cruise ships. We talked to one man watching the sunset who had skied all afternoon and he reported pretty good snow.
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 We didn't take this picture, but it does show some of the 13 observatories on top. That's Maui in the distance. |
 We could see the observatories atop Moana Kea from the little town of Waimea. |
 It was foggy and cold when we drove up |
 Getting close to the top at 13,697 feet our Jeep was not a happy boy. |
 You round the corner and... |
 see this. These things are really huge, they just don't look it in a picture. |
 The actual summit of Moana Kea is a cinder cone to the east. We climbed it after the clouds cleared off. |
 Most of the observatories are robots, controlled from Hilo many miles away. Today there were repair crews working on the French/American unit. |
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 You get the feeling of being on top of the whole world up here. |
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 The top of the cinder cone, just a few feet short of 14,000 feet. |
 The Japanese Subaru radio telescope. |
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 The sunsets are stunning because we are above all the clouds |
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