After a rainy evening and night, morning came quite soggy.
The bike was toweled off and I took some more pictures to commemorate 50 states. This was probably excessive, but we had time in the morning and I wouldn't get a second shot at this. It would shortly be time to return the bike.
I've said it before and I'll probably never stop saying it. Early mornings are the best part of vacation. Early mornings on vacation are even better when riding a motorcycle. We headed out toward the national park to work our way back to Kona. Traffic was very light and temperatures were cool - nearly perfect conditions to ride a motorcycle in Hawaii.
Even as we started to go north, traffic was almost nonexistent.
Eventually, as we got closer to Kona, traffic did pick up. But at least for a while the speeds were very tolerable, making the very curvy roads extremely enjoyable. We had a few miles of bumper to bumper traffic before we made it Big Island Harley Davidson. I've got nothing bad and lots good to say about the people there. They were helpful, friendly and had us in and out quickly.
We transferred all our stuff back into the Charger and headed back south. We had seen (and smelled) some meat smoking at a roadside stand and stopped for lunch. It was a fund raiser of some sort put on by Randy's Huli Chicken. To say it was phenomenal would be an understatement. Randy's Huli Chicken was a near life changing experience.
Back on the road, we continued south and stopped at the lava flows just off HI11. I really like the bleak landscape and it is interesting to see the progression of plant life form as the lava flows age.
We continued south, as far south as it is possible to go in the United States. Last year, we went to Key West, but South Point is even farther south. Apparently there can be a scam where people try to charge for parking, but I didn't see any of that. There were lots of people there, but very few made the mere 0.2 mile walk to the actual southern point.
The road to South Point is very narrow, perhaps not as narrow as Mauna Loa Road, but with much more traffic. City folk didn't seem to understand that it is OK, and probably required, to get two wheels off the pavement to pass on these kinds of roads.
Headed back toward the Hideaway, we stopped at the Kau Desert Trail. This is a trail head for several hikes, but we only went the approximately 0.75 miles to the 200 year old footprints. It was cool and cloudy, which is great conditions for hiking.
I can't say much for the footprints, but once back off of the road, the combination of absolute quiet and unforgivably monotonous landscape was great. For a short easy hike, it was definitely worth it. Walking through lava flows that shows the abrupt end of an a'a flow while an older pahoehoe continues was interesting.
We ended up back at the Hideaway mid afternoon. In contrast to other days, it was hot and almost humid. We've done a lot over the last few days with several more adventures to look forward to. It was time to slow down for a few hours.
We headed toward Hilo for dinner, eating at Honi Wai Cafe, and the food was great. They also sold a dessert kind of poi - they gave me a taste of it and were surprised when I bought the package. It tasted good; the texture was unusual in a good way. And how could I go the Hawaii and not eat Poi?
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