Day at the beach in Sunny (?) Kona....

Last weeked we decided to go to spend a day at the beach in Kona with our friend Gary and his two daughters Kirra and Racey. They are from Australia and live here in Hilo. Kirra is Sydney's friend from Soccer and boogie boarding.

Here are the three stooges on the way there...

Here we aredoing a pit stop in Waimea, paniolo country.

You know that you are in a cow town when the street signs look like this:

or the statues outside the shopping center are this:

So we finally make it down to Kona, where the sun is supposed to shine all day every day and the water is supposed to be warm and crystal clear. We went to Ai'opio beach by the old harbor in Kona, we set up our towels.....

First C & I went snorkeling and the water was cold (well, coldish, once you got in it wasn't that bad) and very murky (and here I do mean very murky). That was the first bad sign of what was yet to come. This was supposed to be a good beach for boogie boarding and surfing, but water was flat, and the surfing break was waaaaaaay out ..... soon after that it started to rain, and it didn't stop after that.

We took refuge in a palm frond hut in the beach to try to wait the storm out...

and so we figured that since we're from Hilo we were not going to let a little rain ruin our day at the beach. The girls with some help from Gary tried to climb some coconut trees, girls picked up shells, went swimming in the ocean, we threw the frisbee around and were having a jolly good time....

but (always a "but") it was not meant to be. Pele (Hawaiian goddess that lives up on the volcanoes) had something else in mind, and as soon as she saw that a little rain was not going to get us out of there, well, she sent out lightning and thunder.... then we packed up and left.....

Next morning we understood what was going on, Pele was getting Mauna Kea all dressed up in white, and in the morning there was a nice coat of snow covering the summit......

And that morning as Mauna Kea was covered in snow I headed out to Tucson where the temperatures were still around 90!...