Day 2 in Hawaii

Today was jam packed with sight seeing, shopping, and picture taking. Read on at your own perile.

I am still on Salt Lake time so I was wide awake at 4:00 am Hawaii time. I got up and got myself ready for the day. Eric was still asleep. So I decided to take a stroll out in the moonlight. I got some fun pics of the full moon and palm trees. I was literally the only person walking around. I laid in a hammock close to the ocean and just soaked in the beauty. I came back to the room and Eric was still asleep. So I started kissing him and trying to wake him up. I told him to get up because I was bored. He laughed. This is a total roll reversal for us. Usually he is the one that can't sleep.

We had breakfast at an open air restaurant by our room. It was a really good buffet. Had some yummy stuff. The birds would fly in if you left your food unattended. I went to get some orange juice- came back and a bird had been eating my bacon. How rude! It was cute.

We then rented a convertible Mustang and went for a tour of the ENTIRE island, 200 miles, and 8 hours of driving. It was a semi sunny day with intemittant clouds and rain (do I sound like a weathergirl?) I will just list where we went and the fun details because I fear my narrative will be pages long.

Waikoloa: Lava rock and fountain grass everywhere (except at the resorts where it is beautifully tropical.)
Parker Ranch: 2nd biggest cattle farm in the US. Surprising. Just drove through it.
Honoka'a: Stopped at Tex Drive In (by recommendation),had Malasadas-like a donut but much thicker and no hole. Yummy and filling. Also I got sweet potato chips with my sandwich wrap. They were purpley- tasted like homemade potato chips. Weird looking but good. Very friendly people.
Akaka Falls: So much vegitation and plant life that I was literally oohing and aahing the whole walk down to the falls and back. Took a million pics. The waterfall was amazing. It created a cave in the lava rock on the bottom from the force of the water. So beautiful.
Hilo: Biggest city on the island. Lots of stores and touristy stuff- but we didn't stop.
Kalapana: This was so cool! We went to the Mt Kiluea Volcano!! We were able to drive right up to the cauldera (the very top of the volcano). We went out to the steam vents- there were tons of them. And Eric's sunglasses fogged up from the heat. We could see a huge column of steam coming out of the volcano. I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see any flowing magma- but it still was so amazing.
Lots of little towns: Drove about 25 miles an hour for two hours because it was raining really hard and people here apparantly have never driven in the rain. We were getting very annoyed. Couldn't see much because of the rain and dark skies.
Kona: Another medium sized city full of shops and big name places. We stopped and WAL-MART and stocked up on supplies. We were even able to get our souveniers there. Kinda fun. Driving along the freeway I saw 3 LDS churches and would get excited. But coming into Kona I saw a temple. I was so excited. I didn't even know there was one here. So we stopped and took some pics. It is very small but beautiful. We almost ran out of gas trying to find a gas station. But we barely made it. The mustang has fantastic gas mileage.
Got back to "home" and we were exhausted from an entire day of driving. We went straight to dinner although we should have freshened up first. We were too hungry and tired. Found a great little sushi bar and had our cheapest meal yet. We were in bed by 10:00. Party animals aren't we?