Boots in the Oven

Our Day on the Beach

Aw, I'm kind of sad.  First, I dropped Logan off at the airport yesterday.  He's back in Hawaii and won't be returning to Austin until the beginning of November, which is so not fun.  But at least I can relive my (less and less) recent Hawaiian trip with him through the blog!  I'm looking at three more posts, including this one, before I can get back to Austin and our experiences with Austin Restaurant Week.

In the meantime, I'm dragging you back with me to the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend.  And to the beach.  Sounds fun, right?

We rented snorkel gear, towels, a small cooler, and totally ridiculous straight-backed beach chairs that were uncomfortable and unadjustable.  A stop at the KTA supermarket across the street for picnicking food, and we were on our way to Kahalu'u Beach, perhaps the best snorkeling spot around.

The inlet is small, but we were there fairly early and had no trouble grabbing a spot for our stuff.  A large sea turtle sunned himself nearby, and we followed his lead for a few minutes.

Guava Wine and Fish at Quinn's - Heading to Kona

I was totally sunburned after our walk under the bright sun to the petroglyphs.  Oops.  

Well, you know what goes with Hawaiian sunburn?

Hawaiian wine!

Luckily, there's a little winery just past Volcanoes National Park, on the Kona side.  Yay!  It's also the southernmost winery in the US.  So we stopped in. 

Honestly, I can't get all that excited about Volcano Winery's wines.  They are dealing with a lot of the same problems here that our Texas wineries have (well, not the frosts, exactly, but the heat), and are importing a lot of their juice from California.  Their guava wine is kind of fun, but pretty sweet.  Matter of fact, their wines generally reminded me of some of our Texas wines - lots of sweetness and fruit, not a lot of complexity.

A Marathon Saturday at Volcano National Park

This was a great day!  Petroglyphs, fresh fish, smoking craters, and SPAM!  Oh yeah, and guava wine!  

We started off, after I got my super-heavynormous suitcase into the car, with a crazy breakfast at Ken's.  Logan got this hilarious omelette, with snow crab and lup cheong and swiss cheese and green onions AND! Hollandaise!  Phew!  I got eggs and spam.  And hashbrowns.  

And both of our breakfasts came with a side of pancakes, with Ken's tasty tropical syrups.  Mixing the coconut with the lilikoi (passionfruit) was my favorite, though the guava was also good.  Ken's is just so solid, and tasty, and completely over-the-top.

Then we drove up towards Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, about 30 miles from Hilo.  We saw this on the way, and Logan hopped out to take a picture - isn't it amazing? I love the creativity here.

Volcano National Park is quite large.  There's hiking to be done, and wandering through lava tubes, and driving over lava flows to the ocean.  When we were there, some of the park was closed because of an ongoing eruption in the Halema`uma`u Crater on Kilauea.  Even so, there was plenty to occupy us for most of the day.

Good food (Hiro's), bad food (Royal Siam), and invisible cows: my last night in Hilo

My rental car was due back in a couple of hours, so after my totally awesome zoo trip I headed over to a likely-looking plate lunch place for lunch.

And yeah, Hiro's Place rocked.  It's a small place - the inside is completely taken up by the kitchen and an extra-long, extra-appealing steam table - but there's plenty of seating outside, especially if you're there for a late lunch.

I was excited to see neatly bundled little laulaus sitting on the steam table and ordered one.  Mine was made with pork, taro leaves and (I think) butterfish, and looked just too pretty wrapped up in its ti leaves.  I got it with a good side of the ubiquitous mac salad, this one very heavy on the potatoes, and a chicken and green bean stirfry.  Oh yeah, and a big ol' scoop of fried rice.  Big, heavy Hawaiian lunch.

In which I go to the ZOO!

More Hawaii posts?  Well, don't mind if I do!  I've got Logan home for a few days, during which we're trying to see everyone we possibly can.  There's no way we'll see everybody, but we're working as hard as we can on being social!

A word of warning - this post only has one (1) food picture in it.  I'll put it in early, so if you're bored by the Pana'ewa Rainforest Zoo's awesome animals, you can check out the food and duck out.

Here it is: breakfast from the Hilo Lunch Shop!

Once again, I didn't go with Logan, just enjoyed the fruits of his hard labor.

Yeah, that maki on the bottom has a hot dog in it.  It tasted like hot dog.  I wasn't the biggest fan.  The cone sushi was good, as were the egg-rolled maki and the tofu patties - a bit of a heavy breakfast, but it got me going for the zoo!