But I digress

We spent two days camping at Hookena Beach. A county park that allows camping. The internet and the Hawaii county website had led us to believe that camping spots were hard to come by and in great demand. We were able to book two nights. The camping was wonderful!

The campground was rustic, in the plus column it had flush toilets, showers and potable water. (Potable water is not guaranteed. The water came down two miles from the main road in a 2” steel pipe very haphazardly layed along the access road. 20 foot lengths interrupted every 10 lengths or so with a pressure regulator). Lost focus

During the day it was busy with daytrippers but at night, mostly empty. There was an interesting woman from China, whose English was quite good, she reported to be working on her PhD in physics and teaching a class at the Tao Academy ( a new age meditation/ empowerment school), via Zoom, from her tent, at 4am. Off topic

There was also a couple from Alaska, half of Hawaii seems to be people who are from Alaska. He worked on the North slope, two weeks on and two weeks off. The weather contrast alone would be hard for the body to take, they came from -10 to -20 and we were complaining about -5. Now what??

3 groups on the whole beach.

But I digress, in the minus column, there was one flush toliet (but how many do you really need), the showers were open air (Hawaii is, luckily, a dark place at night) and the water was heated by the sun, (Hawaii is a dark place at shower time,the water was cold) and the campground was two miles and about 1800ft lower than the main road (for comparison Schenectady City Hall to our driveway is a 400ft difference in elevation). We pushed our bikes for two miles to get back up the hill.

Last night we camped at Whittington Beach Park, another rustic county park, that despite its name is in fact beachless. It does have a very dramatic volcanic shoreline and I suppose that Whittington Dramatic Volcanic Coastline Park would be hard to put on the sign. The ride in was supposed to be a piece of cake, 2500ft loss of elevation over 10 miles. Our brakes were saved by riding into a 20-30 mile/hour gift from the Trade winds.

Yet another short digression. Where are they???If the Big Island of Hawaii were a clock face, our airplane landed last week at 9:00 and we have ridden our way counterclockwise to about 5:30. The entire ride around the island is about 250 miles.

We blew into the “beach park” on Sunday afternoon, there were lots of locals fishing, kids running around, a normal park atmosphere. At 2:30 most everybody seemed to pack up and leave, pretty early as Monday was a holiday. Turns out we were directly downwind from an erupting volcano.

Being downwind from a volcano hasn’t been an issue in Schenectady for at least the last couple of million years. What we thought was blowing sand (the wind was still strong) was volcanic ash and it covered everything with a thin gritty layer. Dinner was crunchier than one would normally like and our sleeping bags had a 600 grit sandpaper feel to them. I also realized that for the first time in 50 some odd years I had hair. It wasn’t some miraculous regrowth but Pele’s Hair, a pale yellow volcanic fiber glass that looks like straight strands of spider web 1/2” to up to 4” long. It’s very delicate and breaks apart when touched. One might have been temped to comb it but I wasn’t. More literary wandering!

The ash fall seemed to end about 6:30 and our eyeballs were all the happier for it.

Utah and Alice (and their little dog Freddie or Eddie (I had taken out my hearing aids in the wind(definently not Totto)) an older nomadic/homeless/ex-tech bro couple blown in from up the road set up camp right under the No-Camping sign in one of the three cinder block pavilions. Their older Toyota Camry must have been stuffed to the headliner because they trucked in an Overlander’s worth of stuff.

Oh look a squirrel! (I suppose that here in Hawaii they would say “Oh look a mongoose”, digressing from my digression I really need to end this missive).

In any case Utah mentioned that the volcano had started erupting and then he pointed out that in the dark, from at least 30 miles away the lava fountain was clearly visible. It was an amazing show if short lived. The glow was in the sky all night long and we got a little more ash fall but the fountaining was only visible for a few minutes.

Tomorrow we plan to cheat the wind and gravity gods by taking the island public bus 4000’ up to the Volcano National Park. We’ll be camped there for 4 nights. This afternoon we head 5 miles down the coast to another County park (and official public bus stop, apparently you can sometimes wave down the driver anywhere but that sounds a bit sketchy). This park is billed as having a real beach, a black sand beach nonetheless. It looks very promising.

Well let’s see if I can up load this via a hotspot.

Dan and Anita (aka TC (for Traveling Companion) or more formally STC (for Sainted Traveling Companion)

But I digress.