You're going to Hawaii? That's so wonderful!

Prior to our trip, every time we talked about going to Hawaii we thought about Luis Guzman's character from Punch Drunk Love and how excited he was for Adam Sandler to be going to Hawaii.  In case you can't tell, we both pretty damn entertained by Luis Guzman (not sure why you wouldn't be!).  And if you didn't know, going to Hawaii is wonderful.

We flew into Hilo but stopped only to get coffee (at a nice coffee stand where the iced coffee was made with ice cubes made of coffee) and spam musubi.  We headed straight for Mauna Kea to check out the sunset and stargazing.  As we were driving up the mountain, we hit a cloud bank and wondered if stargazing was actually in the cards, but then we drove above the clouds and all was crystal clear.  We didn't go all the way to the observatories partly due to time and partly because there is absolutely no way our rental car would have made it (FYI, the Chevy Spark is only a hair nicer than the Aveo, which means it is total crap).  After checking out a lovely sunset, we stuck around the ranger station for the stargazing.  They had telescopes set up to view Venus and Saturn (we saw the rings!).

Afterwards, we headed to our awesome B&B (My Island Bed & Breakfast) where we spent two nights.  They had yummy breakfast and gave us great information on how best to explore the volcano (see tomorrow's post for what we did!).