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Brent Lineberry

Web and app developer. Coffee, beer, and running, in any order.

Hawai’i Day Four: Drive to Hilo via the Saddle Road

Today was a travel day, driving to Hilo for the last half of our trip. We took the saddle road (Highway 200) which goes through the middle of the island, stopping at the Mauna Kea visitors center for a short hike. Then we settled into Hilo for the evening.

The morning view from our Airbnb, day four

Today was a travel day, driving to Hilo for the last half of our trip. We took the saddle road (Highway 200) which goes through the middle of the island. We intended to do a little hike at Pu’u Huluhulu, a nature trail/native tree sanctuary, but were a sign was posted that aerial hunting was taking place yesterday and today and certain game management areas were off limits. We weren’t sure if that applied to this trail, but figured better safe than sorry. Than it started cold raining and that solidified our decision to skip it.

We drove up to the Mauna Kea visitors center, situated at 9,200 feet. We drove from sea level to 9,200 feet today! We hiked the Pu’u Kalepeamoa trail there.

On the way up the Pu’u Kalepeamoa trail

The Pu’u Kalepeamoa trail is a short half mile hike to the small summit of Pu’u Kalepeamoa. It’s mostly loose rock with some sparse but interesting vegetation. It was windy and cold most of the way up, spitting water at us from a cloud right next to it. Towards the top it warmed up, but I’m not sure if that’s true or if it was just weird altitude effects.

Megan and me at the summit of Pu’u Kalepeamoa

It was literally downhill from there as we finished our drive to Hilo. We ate lunch at Coco Cantina and then checked into our hotel. Right across from the hotel is a small bay with several green sea turtles. Allyssa saw a sea turtle on one of our snorkeling spots, but the rest of us missed it. We all got to see them here. They were right in the shallow water feasting on algae.

A photo of a green sea turtle swimming in clear shallow water.

We ate dinner at Pineapple’s Island Fresh Cuisine. We had about an hour wait so some of us took a bit of a walk around. At dinner time, a lot of things were closed, and there was a real low energy to Hilo. We stopped into the best lit and most inviting shop we saw, a local art gallery, which had a lot of beautiful pieces from local artists. Not long after that our table was getting ready and we hustled back to Pineapple’s. In contrast to the surrounding area, Pineapple’s was hopping. There was live music, the food and drinks were good, and our waitress had no problem handling our group of 13 and all of our various requests.