Friday, May 13, 2011

Kona 2011 - Day 2

First morning in Kona, and the nice view from our patio. Not exactly an ocean view, but not bad either!
Lovely mural inside the place we had breakfast:

Akasha and her lilikoi lemonade. :)
We wanted a mostly down day for our first day, so hung out at the pool a bit. I spied one of these lizards and was just floored. It didn't even look real!
Then we had to test out the new underwater camera!
Startin on the first step. The yellow tape was because there was an area they were trying to get totally dry so they could paint the surface, which was a bit of a pain for people with kids since it was the ground between the only steps and the kiddie pool! Glad they got that taken care of quickly.



So nice to have a camera you can use in the pool!

Later that day, we headed up Mauna Kea to go to the visitor center, which is at just over 9000 feet. You literally drive right through the clouds! We would have loved to drive right to the top, at over 13000 feet, and see the many observatories along the way, which you can do, but you need a 4WD, and they actually don't recommend it for small children. So we just checked out the visitor center, which was pretty cool in its own right, and the staff were very friendly and informative! Here you are basically looking down on the cloud layer, although it is kinda hard to tell in this photo.
We stayed until dark, because I had read about how they get out powerful telescopes every night, and it was pretty great this close to the full moon. They hook up a big screen to the one they set on the moon. We also got to see Saturn in a couple of them! Orion was more interested in the gift store lol, and he picked out one of those fiberoptic "lamps" with all the long strands. I also think I am going to put a virtual geocache here - was surprised there wasn't one already - so stay tuned for that! :)

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