Hawaii Beaches and Geocaching

I woke up this morning to find perfectly blue sunny skies. You would have never guessed there was a major storm system that had passed by yesterday. After taking our time getting going this morning, we headed out the door around 10:30 and headed to the Hamakua Macadamia Nut Company (https://hawnnut.com/) in Kawaihae. It was a short 15 minute drive to the north of where we are staying. They had an excellent store and had windows where you could watch the packaging production. Unfortunately there was not a lot of activity going on behind the glass, but I still found it interesting. They had free samples of some of their flavored macadamia nuts. I tried the pineapple, birthday cake, and onion flavored nuts. Each one was unique and different, but I settled on buying a bag of unsalted/unflavored nuts. I also bought a small can of chocolate covered macadamia nuts, although that probably wasn’t the smartest choice since we weren’t planning on going right back and they were going to be sitting in the warm car. Yup . . when I opened up the can to eat one several hours later the chocolate was quite melted! I put them in the fridge when we got back and I’m sure I’ll be able to chip them out later.

Upon leaving the store, our next stops were all in the quest of geocaching and beach walking. I picked up two easy guardrail caches before we made our way to Hapuna Beach State Park. It cost $10 for the car and $5/person but I had read on the internet (so it must be true) that it was ranked the #1 beach in America. The beach is just a half mile long but is the biggest white sand beach on the island. Uncle Andy found a nice covered picnic table to sit at with a great view of the ocean while I took my stroll. It didn’t take long to walk to the beach, but there was a trail that continued up off the beach along the ocean that I followed. There were a couple of geocaches along this route. I stopped and searched for the first one but couldn’t come up with the find and moved on to the second. Here I had success. I thought about continuing to the third, but didn’t want to keep Uncle Andy waiting too long so I turned around and headed back. The views along the trail were beautiful and the trail was dirt which was nicer than the lava rock trails I had been walking. I walked the length of the beach back before I headed back up to relax in the shade with Uncle Andy.

We next moved down the road to Hapuna Beach. This was a smaller beach, but yet just as pretty. It was weird to see pine trees line the beach instead of palm trees. There were no geocaches here but I enjoyed the short walk and views.

From here we began the geocaching stretch in the small town of Puako. At the general store there was an old telephone booth. I knew a Travel Bug hotel was located at the telephone booth. Uncle Andy was up on the porch of the General Store and he said did you look behind it? At that point I hadn’t because the bushes were pretty tight, but I poked around and low and behold it was hanging off the back. He said he could see something hanging from his vantage point. Good job!

From there started a string of 5 caches all at public beach access points. I was able to find 3 of the 5 caches. At one of them I walked the tiny stretch of beach after I had made the find and almost stumble across a sea turtle sunning itself on the beach! I had been looking left and right and almost didn’t see it directly in front of me. He had lifted his head at the same time I turned mine toward his direction. It startled me for sure, but I felt blessed to have been given the opportunity to see the turtle up close and personal. Thanks geocaching!

Having found the last of the beach access caches, I felt “cached” out for the day and was ready to head back to the condo. After dropping our stuff at the condo we headed up to the Ocean Club (pool and bar area for the condo) and enjoyed a happy hour Mai Tai. They really do make them quite good here. While enjoying our drink I stated I wanted some authentic Hawaiian for dinner. The bartender at Ola Brewing a few nights before had mentioned a place called Pine Tree Cafe (https://www.pinetreecafehi.com/) that had good local food, so that is where we went. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to try the fried poke or the Pulehu short ribs so I asked the person taking my order which one I should get. She said I could do a little of each!! Perfect! I liked them both, but if I had to order again I would go with just the fried poke. The seasoning on the ribs was outstanding, but they were a little chewier and more work to eat than the poke. The flavor on the poke was also very good.

After dinner we went over to Costco to get gas, water, and milk. Not being a regular Costco shopper I didn’t realize I couldn’t get just a half-gallon of milk and had to buy a whole gallon. We probably won’t go through a whole gallon, but it still is probably cheaper to buy a gallon at Costco than a half gallon anywhere else. Also Costco only sells cases of bottled water and not the gallon jug of water that I was looking for. We just bought the milk and will save the search for water another day.

I’m looking forward to my snorkeling excursion tomorrow!

Stats of the Day

Steps: 10,386
Geocaches: 8 of 11 attempted
Gas: $4.49/gallon at Costco
Price of Gallon of Milk with Tax: $6.17