The Big Island

Last week, Steve and I went to Hawaii for 6 days. He was going for work and I decided to tag along and make it our first trip alone since having kids. We are so thankful to have my parents relatively close by to come and babysit. We flew into Kona, rented a totally child unfriendly car, and drove to the Observers Headquarters at the base of Mauna Kea.

Mauna Kea, at 14,000 ft, is the site of several large research telescopes, including the two Keck telescopes. Steve's current project is to design, build, test, and install a spectrograph for one of these two 10-meter telescopes. He and three other team members went over to check out the room where the instrument will go, and installed some temperature, pressure, vibration, and humidity sensors. I left Steve at the dormitories (at 9,000 ft) where he stayed the night to acclimatize, and I drove on to Hilo.

Here's Steve at the summit of Mauna Kea, above the clouds.  In the background, the Japanese Subaru telescope is to the left, and the twin Keck telescopes are on the right.

This diagram was in the visitor center and shows the sizes of the telescopes within the domes.  Between the telescopes are offices and labs - which give a good sense of how big the telescopes are compared to a person.

Steve in front of the Keck II telescope - the telescope is so big that one picture can't capture it all at once.  In this view the primary mirror of the telescope (which is 10 meters across) is in the background.  

After he joined me in Hilo (which is on the rainy east side of the island), we explored the city a bit and then spent half a day slowly driving to Kona on the west side of the island. We stayed in Kona three more nights. The first day we went to a beach hoping to snorkel but it was really wavy and rough so instead we sat and read on the beach until after sunset. 

The second day we drove to a trailhead for a 2 mile hike down 1500 ft to the shoreline where Captain Cook met his death. There was also supposedly really good snorkeling. 

Although there were no sandy beaches, the snorkeling was amazing and we still hung out reading on the black lava rocks until dusk, when we hiked back up. 

While snorkeling, we saw at least a dozen different varieties of colorful fish amongst the corals. We also swam a bit further around the bay and watched in awe as the shoreline dropped away and an abyss of deep blue ocean lay in front of us. It was eery and beautiful - empty of fish and so deep you had to remind yourself that you were floating and would not fall off the edge into that deepness. 

It was a wonderful trip - both for what Steve needed to get done for work, and also for us to be able to travel and explore on our own again. The kids had a great time with Grammie and Grandpa. We skyped or talked on the phone every day and heard lots of stories. Steve will likely be going back a few more times over the next 3 years, so we may try to do this again, or perhaps even bring the rest of the crew along with us next time.