Kona/Kailua

Our plans for Kona were impacted by high surf. First they canceled the snorkel trip Maria was going to take with the Manta Ray's. Then, on Wed morning, we were to meet at the dock at 8:30am, after a 1 hour drive, to go out for a family snorkel trip. Right as we got there, we found it that it was going to be canceled too. This meant we had until 4:30pm to waste away the day, even though we had already checked out of the hotel. So we drove to downtown Kailua/Kona to see what we could see.
Nate is eating a traditional Hawaiian shaved ice. Pineapple, Coconut and Blue Hawaii flavored. Of course he didn't each too much of it before he got bored.

Nate and Baba hanging out on the breaker. Nate was having a hard time posing for photos.

We ate lunch at a place called Splasher's. It was great food. Loved the fish n chips and fish taco's we had. Service was great, and Mai Tai's were only $3. Note the matching wrist bands we're wearing. Nate picked red ones because he thought they could help us shoot out lava from our hands.

Nate and Daddy hanging out. In the background is the cruise ship that Robert intends to take in the next few months. We talked to some of the folks on the cruise ship and they said the food was horrible. Couldn't wait to get off and get some better local food. Otherwise, they loved the ship.


This is the view from our hotel in Waikoloa, just north of Kona. We got an Ocean front room that had a pretty amazing view. Sunsets would have been amazing, as it set right out our window, but we were never in our room at sunset, too busy driving around seeing the sights.

Nate's favorite part of the resort and quite possibly the entire vacation. Our first day they said he was too short to ride the water slide, need to be 42". He was about 1/2" short and I couldn't believe they wouldn't make and exception. The next day we tried, we made sure he wore his sandals and stood as tall as he could. He passed, although this "new" girl that measured him did notice he had sandals on, but was much nicer and let him go. After about 60 trips up and down the slide, he was warmed up. Couldn't get enough. I guess this summer we'll need to take him to Golfland Sunsplash there in Roseville.

I mentioned in the previous post that the white rocks on a black lava rock were used to spell things out, here's a better example of that.