Four Outta Five Ain't Bad

Last Friday was the second trip planned by Jane to get compass directions for a series of pictures after the 2006 earthquake. This time we traveled to Kawaihae, a city north of Kona. One of the sites damaged was the Pu`ukohola heiau (temple). Pu`u means hill, and kohola means humpback whale, so the site is right near the coast where humpback whales congregate from November to May. Hopefully I can come back over here before I leave! This is a picture of the main heiau building that was damaged:

After the second site (the Kawaihae pier, where the main security guard thought we were crazy for wanting compass directions for buildings that were damaged and didn't exist anymore), we stopped at a chicken plate lunch stand near the road and then drove to Hawi. Hawi is the northern-most town in Hawaii, I'm pretty sure, and it's also super artsy-fartsy. It's a small town with a lot of art galleries and overpriced unnecessary things. Still, I liked this sign:


We decided to drive to Pu`u Huluhulu, one of Mauna Kea's old eruptive cones that is now surrounded by Mauna Loa lava flows. This is the view from the top looking towards Mauna Kea, with many more Mauna Kea cones all around and the treacherous Saddle Road in the middle:


On the drive up to the Mauna Kea observatory, I got hungry for some delicious chicken...


Here's the visitor's center right before sunset - we hiked up one of the nearby cones to watch the sun go down.


Here's a view of some cones from the top looking toward Mauna Loa. The cones are so pretty, I think.


And here's the sun, and the third youngest volcano Hualalai is in the distance behind the clouds.

So today we saw four out of five volcanoes, including the oldest, Kohala, in the north on the way back from Hawi.

Just for reference, the volcanoes from youngest to oldest are: Kilauea, Mauna Loa, Hualalai, Mauna Kea, and Kohala.