Day 5, Hilo

What a day!!!  We headed out for Hilo bright and early at 7am this morning!!  Our first stop was breakfast at Tex Drive-in in Honokaa.  Dave and I each had an egg mcmuffin type thing made on fresh made sweet bread, yum!!  The kids both had super fluffy pancakes that I assume we're from scratch.  But, the best part was the malasadas!!!  They are basically a filled doughnut rolled in sugar, but, everything about them is amazing and done just right...they were even warm still!!!  Can't wait to go back!

From there, we got in the car and headed to Akaka Falls.  The hike down to the falls was super beautiful.  We all really enjoyed it.

Dave didn't believe I'd climb this tree...but, I proved him wrong!  Hahaha!

There were cats everywhere on the island and Akaka Falls was no different.  There was one laying in the shade of the overlook even.  Olivia REALLY wanted to love it, but, it REALLY didn't want touched.  She finally looked at me and said, "Make that kitty let me love him".  It was too funny...

Check out the size of the stump Liv's standing on!!  The trees are just massive on this side of the island!!

The flowers on the island are just unbelievable to me.  Everything I think of as a house plant just grows wild there!

Then off we went to hit the Hilo zoo...it was free, can you believe that!!  It wasn't huge, but, it was pretty impressive and had a great playground.  The kids really had a lot of fun.  They had all of these super cute benches for photo ops too!

 These orchids fascinated me, they just tied them to trees all over the zoo and they were flourishing!!

 These two are so sweet together!

We went downtown and had lunch at Pineapples which was really good too.   They had an appetizer called "cheese puffs" that I could have eaten a dozen of!  The kids and Dave all had fish and chips which were great and I settled on fish tacos...I LOVE fish tacos and these were some of the best I've had.

We stopped at the Farmers market and picked up a pineapple and some more apple bananas, yum!!  The kids both got a shark tooth necklace and were thrilled.

We made a quick stop at "Two Ladies Kitchen" for what is supposed to be the best mochi in all of Hawaii.  Mochi is this Japanese candy that is made of a rice dough stuffed with red bean paste and other ingredients.  The dough is squishy and moldable (think raw bread dough but less sticky and less flavor!!).  I got some stuffed with brownies and grapes (grape one below...the brownie ones didn't last long!), Dave chose a peanut butter version...shocking, I know! The kids picked on color and their's was disgusting!!  No idea what it was!!

The kids were exhausted, but, still wanted to stop at the lava cave just outside of town.  I don't see the appeal myself...it's a dark cold hole in the rock.  Dave and Owen are dying to hike the full two miles of this particular tube though...once you see the first 100 feet of a lava tube haven't you seen it all?!!?!?  I'm gonna have to guess it only gets darker!!!

Dave really wanted to do the full loop and take Saddle Road back through the middle of the island rather than returning the way we came along the coast.  He wanted me to "see the scenery" along the road.  I was not real happy about it, but, he was so excited about it, I finally caved.  Ironically, as soon as we got started down the road, the fog rolled in and was so thick, we literally couldn't see past the edge of the road...this was after it started to lift..

Longest hour and a half ever!!  There's nothing but rock and a few sad shrubs to see.  Plus, you only go through one town, Waimea, and it's just 10 miles out of Waikoloa!!  He won't be able to trick me into that again!!  We lost both kids, but, Owen woke up before I could get his picture!!

By the time we got home, we'd been gone almost 12 hours!!! We are all worn out and looking forward to a lazy day around the condo tomorrow!!!