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If you drive north from Hilo you pass a number of beautiful places, including Onomea Bay, Akaka Falls, and (if you take a detour) the Waipio Valley Lookout. Yes, we did drive north from Hilo fairly often, so we did see these places. Many times. I'm sorry I don't have any photos of these places, but I only have so much room on my account. If you keep on the highway you'll eventually get to Waimea-Kamuela. More commonly referred to as Waimea, it's located almost smack between Hilo and Kailua-Kona, but not as the nene flies. Waimea has a western feel to it, which makes sense because it's home to Parker Ranch, the largest privately owned ranch in the United States. At 225,000 acres and over 50,000 head of cattle, it's pretty big. Pretty rich, too. They donated the land for the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope headquarters (or so rumour has it...). Yes, CFHT headquarters are in Waimea, and so are those for the twin Keck telescopes. Waimea is frequently shrouded in mist and fog, so we usually just passed through on our way to the other side, stopping at McDonalds and Subway of course. After our Maui trip (further down this page, or maybe the next) we had more incentive to actually stop for a decent reason, and that was to either pick up Meghan or to stop at her place. Meghan Gray was a fellow Canadian working at CFHT who we met on the Maui trip, and she subsequently got assimilated into a few of our intrepid groups. From Waimea we usually went east to the beaches. Hapuna Beach is one of the nicest beaches I've been to. We went there four or five times, I'm sure. Beach 69 was only frequented once, but it was still very nice. North from Waimea is the Kohala region, which is full of rolling grassland. Parker Ranch country, y'know. The region has many wonderful sights, including ancient heiaus (Hawaiian temples), quaint towns, and beautiful canyons. The original King Kamehameha statue (seen here) is found in Hawi. Just up the road from Hawi is the Pololu Lookout, which looks out over the Pololu Valley. This valley is the first (or last, depending on which way you go) in a series of seven stretching along the north coast. Because they're on the north coast (and windward side of the island) they get a lot of rain, and are quite lush with vegetation. It is possible to hike from Pololu Valley to Waipio Valley, but we never did it.

South from Hapuna Beach is the town of Kailua-Kona, which is very touristy. There are some nice snorkeling places down near here, places that I've seen so many fish I didn't know what to do. I've taken pictures, but it's tough to tell where the fish were, so I got a pile of pictures of rocks with one tiny fish somewhere in there. South from Kailua-Kona are another bunch of fabulous spots, like the Place of Refuge. This was a Hawaiian temple-like place where people would go when they broke one of the kapus, or laws. Breaking a kapu usually meant death, so it was usually in people's best interests to get to a Place of Refuge. There's a nice snorkeling beach right next-door to the Place of Refuge. Keep going south and you can reach South Point, the southernmost point in the United States. Keep following the road around and eventually you get to Volcano, and that's where the first page left off.