Thursday, 7/26 - Zip Line, Akaka Falls, Hilo, Observatory

Up and out by 7 am for the hour and half ride to the zip line. First a stop at the ABC for our .99 coffees, and $1.99 breakfast pastries! Our breakfast - $13.00. Winner! Bet the lady at the resort wish she knew about ABC!

 The zip line adventure was a lot of fun. Emma was a bit nervous at first, but did very well. We zipped 7 times total, traversing the river with a great view from above. The longest zip was 1,100 feet, and the last zip was a dual race to the end. Austin beat Mike, and I beat Emma!

Akaka Falls is a beautiful waterfall that plunges 442 feet into an eroded gorge. The .4 mile loop trail takes you through some incredible rain forest with banyan trees, orchids, hanging flowers, palms... just amazing, thick foliage. A stop on the loop trail is a view of the Kahuna falls - not as impressive because of the extreme angle and foliage blocking the view, but pretty none the less.

Emma & Austin at Rainbow Falls

Another stop was at Rainbow Falls.  Not running as heavily as seen in other pictures on the web.  It's called Rainbow Falls because of the resulting rainbows created by the mist.  No mist today = no rainbows.  However, we did have rain and mist throughout the day.  Go figure.

Austin creating his own Lava plate

They call them drive ins, but they are more like walk ins.

Killed some time in Hilo trying our hand at another plate meal. This joint, called Verna's and recommended by one of our zip line guides, served fries so he could substitute the rice for the fries to make a more authentic home-style garbage plate. He liked this mac salad and gravy better than the last place. We also discovered what POG is - it's pineapple, orange and guava juice combined. Emma now has a new favorite drink and is on the lookout for it everywhere we go. Otherwise, we weren't too impressed with Hilo. Seemed very depressed.

Last stop on our round trip was the Mauna Kea Observatory. There are currently 13 working telescopes, including the largest optical/infrared telescopes in the world. A summit tour of the observatories wasn't going to happen on this trip - due to the 14,000 foot altitude, you really need a 4WD car, and you have to be at least 16. But we were able to visit the Onizuka Visitor Center for the star gazing program.

We froze our butts off waiting for the clouds to clear, but they finally made their way down the mountain around 8 pm. The telescopes came out and we were able to see Saturn and her rings. It was so perfectly clear, that it looked like someone made a cut out of it and put it on the end of the telescope! The moon looked pretty wild too - the detail of the craters was amazing. The ride up and down