We Hope It's Extinct...

Hawaiians like to use a lot of stops and skips in their words which usually make them fun to say. Today Keith convinced us that we should hike up a Pu'u. For those of you not fluent in Hawaiian like we are, a Pu'u is a volcanic cone. Not really the primary crater of a volcano but a little opening on the side that spews out molten hot rock all over everything. Fun right!?

This one has been extinct for a while. Or at least we hoped as we made our climb. Keith assured us that it would be an easy hike. So we grabbed our water bottles and cameras and headed up this "easy" mountain.

Just to get to the main Pu'u you have to walk up a steady incline for about a mile. Luckily it was paved so it was at least easy to keep balance and walk. And there were really cool plants on either side so we had something to look at. I didn't quite get why we couldn't drive up there if it was paved....

Apparently these are weeds... I thought they were pretty
As we huffed and puffed up the mountain we got passed by a group of people running up this monster of a hill. Needless to say it made us feel pretty good about ourselves. 

Once the paved road ends it becomes grass, and hills, and mounds, and cliffs, and lots of uneven ground. The view was really great though. We could look all the way down to the coast!











While admiring the view some new friends came to greet us. Or rather we went to greet them and they wanted nothing to do with us. It was a very one-sided friendship...
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Posing for the camera
And of course it had to be documented that we made some new friends...

​But first, let me take a selfie
We hiked a bit farther and got to where the Pu'u goes pretty much straight up. We were rather exhausted by this point and, after some discussion, decided not to go to the very top. 
On the way back down Rose and I realized that we didn't really take too many pictures for the blog so we snapped a few of some grass and trees along the way. Although looking back and writing this I think we got all the good parts. 

Since this hike was so "easy" we all decided to grab a beer at the Big Island Brewhaus (one of my favorites) on the way back to the house. Gotta stay hydrated right!?