Family Trip-Day 7

Today was Sunday and we went to sacrament meeting at the local branch. It was so great! The church is true wherever you go! The same gospel, the same Spirit, home is where the gospel is! We got to listen to fast and testimony meeting. Wow! Living outside of Utah gives them such wonderful missionary opportunities each day! The wardhouse shared grounds with the Kona temple. After the meeting we went out to get some pics. We were in luck. A family from another island was on spring break and we took their picture and they took ours!

After changing from our church clothes and having some lunch we piled everyone back in the van for a driving tour of the northern end of the island. This was my favorite part of the island so far, mostly because it was the closest in scenery to my beloved home in Hyrum. There were open fields, lots of wind, and some steep hills with actual pine trees resembling real mountains! The beautiful view of the ocean was an added bonus.

We stopped by Waipo (?) Valley at the overlook. Sam, Sharra and Adam wandered down the trail, but it was slippery and steep so I kept the little girls topside with me. This area is used in an opening shot of one of the Jurassic Park movies.

Then we stopped for a shot by the original King Kamehameha statue. There was a little plaque telling the story of it. This statue was supposed to have been delivered to a different island, but he ship carrying it caught fire en route. The statue sank to the bottom of the ocean, but it was in shallow enough water that it was later scavenged out again. Another statue was commissioned and that's the one in Honolulu. This one was later found by the captain of the original ship commissioned to bring it to Hawaii. he found it outside a shop, like a cigar Indian. He bought it and brought it back out to Hawaii as it was originally meant to be. But being burned and sunk on the bottom of the ocean had taken it's toll on the statue. Thus began the tradition of painting it. This current statue had 28 coats of paint on it to date!