After returning late from our evening lava hike, we decided to take it easy and make it a lazy morning. The Airbnb we stayed in was easily one of the best I have ever stayed in. The host offered us coffee and a half guava filled with granola. Just sitting there enjoying breakfast causes the morning to fly by.

We finally hit the road around 10 and opted to take the longer scenic route around the Puna coast. If I were to tell people to just see one part of the Big Island, I think Puna would be my first choice.

After finishing our casual drive around Puna, we head back into Volcanoes National Park. At the visitor center, we overheard someone saying the lava hike within the park was 12 hour round trip, so we felt happy that we had done it the night before. In the Park, we visited a lava tube, some steaming vents, and had a nice overlook of the crater from the museum. It was a pretty nice National Park to spend some time, but after we checked off the major attractions, we were feeling pretty hungry so we head into Hilo.

In Hilo we ate at Hawaiian style cafe. The food was pretty good. We ate a poke bowl and a mento bento. They both came in Hawaii size portion (huge).

After lunch, we needed to do a little exercise to burn off lunch, so we headed to Akaka Falls State Park. There was a paved 2 mile loop to view both falls in the park. This part of the island receives a crazy amount of rain and today was no different. We walked the loop in the rain. It was warm, though, so not too unpleasant.

After we finished the loop, we realized we had a lot of time before sunset with nothing left on the agenda, so we made the decision to detour to Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain on the island. We drove up on the Saddle Road through dense fog until all of a sudden the fog cleared – we were on top of the clouds!

They do not allow cars without 4wd above the visitor center (9,000 ft). So we spent some time reading the informational materials. There was a telescope set up with special filters to watch the sun. I looked through and saw a solar flare! After exhausting the visitor center, we climbed up a small local peak and watched the sunset from there. It was truly spectacular to watch the sunset with basically unobstructed views in all directions.

After sunset, we hopped back in the car and drove an hour and change to our hostel. When we arrived, we set our alarms to be ready for tomorrow’s sunrise hike ?