36.3 mi / 11.2 mph / 1846 ft. climbing
Home: Spencer Beach Park

The on-and-off rain must have stopped sometime during the night, because the tent was dry by morning. Well, except for the bottom. Due to the solid plywood layer of the tent platform, rain running down off the rainfly hit the platform and then collected under the tent body. At Mount Desert Campground in Maine (one of the few other places that we’ve used a tent platform), they’re smart enough to build the deck out of slats so that water can drain. That might also prevent formation of the thin layer of slick mud that was now coating our platform here at Hippocampus.

Despite those annoyances, it was pretty cool waking up in the jungle. Plenty of plant debris had fallen onto our tent overnight, but unfortunately none of the avocados that a sign warned us to be wary of. Since no one was staying in any of the tiny shelters, I didn’t feel bad about using one of them to stage our bags, because it was one of the only dry and non-muddy surfaces to be found. Getting everything back up out of the gulch was a chore, but the unique camping experience was still worth all the trouble.

Leaving the farm, we rolled down into the town of Hawi. A woman in front of the grocery store wondered if we were the ones she had seen yesterday riding over Kohala mountain; her amazement that we had both conquered the giant climb and survived the traffic (both of which left us completely unfazed) reinforced how strong and acclimated to bike-touring challenges we must be.

We climbed the two mountains yesterday because the island’s Ring Road made a significant departure from the coast. As Kohala’s slope runs north into the sea, it’s cut by a series of deep valleys that would be a serious challenge for a coast road to traverse. We had skipped the in-and-out ride to the easternmost valley (Waipi’o) a couple days ago, so today we would make up for it with an in-and-out ride to the westernmost valley (Pololu). At ~400 feet, it’s less than half as deep and epic as Waipi’o, but that at least means the path to hike down to the bottom is more-manageable.

Our eastward ride marked our first time facing into the island’s constant trade winds, but Rett did the best headwind-fighting (both physically and mentally) she’s ever done. Though a 14% climb out of a pre-valley caught her by surprise and had her pushing for a short stretch.

At the surprisingly-crowded parking area I put together some lunch for us to carry down along with our chairs. At the start of the trail there was an information/first-aid tent, and we were given a short speech about the various dangers (dehydration, drowning, broken ankles) that have led to 9 helicopter rescues this year. Uh, what?! Isn’t it like a 2 mile hike with 400 feet of climbing? I guess it’s an indication of how many tourists with no real outdoor experience end up on Hawaiian vacations!

For us, it turned out to be even easier than I expected, because the exposed chunks of volcanic rock that made up most of the trail surface were super-sticky to walk on, so descending was for once as easy as the hike back up. We ate lunch at the edge of the lagoon that connects intermittently with the sea (when one of the massive waves rolling in wasn’t cancelled by its predecessor rolling out).

Despite supposedly having tailwinds as we backtracked to Hawi, they didn’t seem to help much, but that’s probably because we were also going overall uphill. It was now well after lunchtime, and despite riding some 17 miles, we had little to show for it as we again found ourselves at the grocery store only a mile from our campsite. This time there was a table set up, and behind it was a guy who had just finished climbing local palm trees to collect coconuts. For a mere $10, Rett could select one and drink the refreshing water inside (I went with the less-natural/less-local/much-cheaper PowerAde from the grocery store), though she did also get a bag of the flesh to take with her.

A guy wandered over who was supposedly surviving for a year with only things he could acquire via bartering. His fanciful stories led Rett to believe that he was a legitimate crazy person, but my interpretation was that being a fanciful (yet sane) storyteller is a nearly-required skill if your life depends on your ability to get people to give you tangible things in exchange for things that might not be a good trade on a strict monetary basis. Either way, it was a good reminder of how much further out from us on the “unconventional life” spectrum people are living.

Hawi is the turnaround point of the 112-mile bike ride from Kona that makes up the second stage of the original (and world-championship) Ironman Triathlon. So for the next 20 miles to our destination, we would be riding the very road that I had seen poetically effused over when randomly tuning into NBC’s broadcast on lazy Saturday afternoons in the ’90s! Even though we’d only ride 18% of the bike course today, it was still cool for me. Now closer to the water than yesterday (in both distance and elevation), we were heading south on the road that we could see snaking far below from high on Kohala’s slope. Though I was surprised that for the first several miles, the road surface was the most-cracked we’d rolled across (on our much-fatter-than Ironman-bike tires) in Hawaii! But soon the smooth wide shoulder I remembered from TV appeared, along with that famously-beating sun heating the much-drier landscape, now that we are well into the rain shadow of the volcanoes to the east.

Despite that brief road roughness, we still averaged over 11mph for the day, the third time we had done that in our five days since departing Hilo. In contrast, across ~100 riding days in New Zealand, we only beat 11mph 14 times (60% vs. 14% for the arithmetically-sluggish)! While I’d like to credit our increasing strength, I think the more-likely explanation is that the (generally) butter-smooth American asphalt has removed the speed-sapping drag of New Zealand’s chip-sealed roads.

Our midday hike meant that we rolled down to Spencer Beach Park relatively late in the afternoon. While we had secured one of the hard-to-get reservation slots, the county parks don’t have designated sites, so we were disappointed to find all of the waterfront real-estate already occupied by the time we arrived. Oh, except one spot! Maybe…? Down really close to the point where the sloping, rocky land entered the water was a flattish spot that might be big enough to fit our tent. I set to work using my hands as shovels to regrade the gravelly ground and build it out into the shape of our tent, while Rett took an unasked-for hot shower when a cold one would have been much more beneficial (it technically is a “cold shower” in that there is no artificial heating of the water, but the natural temperature of collected water on this side of the island is at least 70 degrees, and the black pipes running it to the park made it even warmer).

Shortly after I returned from my non-cooling shower, Rett began hollering “Neil!! Neil!!! My eye!!” While she had been sitting and attempting to relax, some sort of insect flew toward her eye and her instinctive blink brought it briefly in contact with her eyeball. This led to an immediate burning, and even after we hobbled her over to an outdoor sink and flushed it out as best we could, it still left her feeling like there was a large piece of debris in there, forcing her to squeeze her eye shut for the majority of the evening. Luckily nothing was rapidly swelling or reddening, but it certainly ended any chance at relaxation in this beautiful setting, before it had even started.

This was the first day in Hawaii (of 10 so far) where we have not seen a drop of rain in a 24-hour period. On the one hand, it’s nice to have everything fully dried-out, and we can sleep without the rainfly on the tent for the first time in a year(?), but on the other hand we sure missed the cooling effects of the rain, and with the temperature expected to go no lower than the mid-70s overnight, I hope we’re able to sleep.