July 24

Today is the day we leave. We have a 6:00 flight out of here over to Maui and then are headed home tomorrow morning. Sad...
The last pictures I put up are what we have been up to. The small baby is Savannah, Joel's sister's 9 month old. She's adorable. When tropical depression Cosme came by, it rained here from Fri-Sun. However, starting yesterday, the weather was beautiful and sunny again. We took advantage of the weather by hitting all the indoor hot spots including an orchid show/sale, and a winery up in Volcano, the town. In somewhat of a mist, we stopped at the Zoo on Saturday and one of our finer sites was this lemur, not pictured is the white tiger, the main attraction of the Pana'ewa zoo. We drove to the top to see the Kilauea and Halemaumau Craters but fought rain the entire way. We could see the devastation from the lava flows, smell the sulfur, and see the large craters in the earth known as lava chambers but through windows that were constantly fogging and a deluge to me at 5-10'' of rainfall on the day. Hilo gets 400'' of rainfall yearly, so this was nothing for them.
Also pictured is the 5 of us at Akaka falls.
We stopped at Spencer Beach on our way back from Kona and watched the sunset there and took some great pictures. Also at Spencer beach is a heiau, a hawaiian temple. There are two temples visible to the eye and a third is said to be in the water, a temple built to the shark deities. In the bay, there have been occasional shark sitings for years as they used to sacrifice people less than 200 years ago. Hence the picture with the four of us and the shark siting sign.
They were here for 5 whirlwind days and most nights we celebrated with Mai Tais, Pina Coladas, Mint Mojitos and Spades. Lots of cards. I think that all that might have led to the mask being worn one night, but I couldn't be sure.
It's been loads of fun. Today, we're cleaning cleaning cleaning. Lots to do. Up at 7 to get started on the place in hopes that we can finish around 10/11 to head out to the beaches here one last time before we depart. Have a nice day!