Day 5 started out a little lazy – morning coffee on the patio with the family waiting for our little kitty cat friend to stop by for a visit. Unfortunately, our resort gardeners came by instead. I knew that there was no way the cat would come by with a riding lawn mower buzzing around. Since there was no kitty cat around we had to find some other form of entertainment. With Ms. Violet around there is always some form of entertainment though. Violet recently watched Strange Magic and has since memorized most of the songs and lines in the movie. This particular morning she used the inner-tube we got from our neighbors that were leaving and she turned it into a guitar.
After our morning entertainment we got dressed and headed over to Ocean Rider Seahorse Farm in Kona, Hawai’i. This is an phenomenal organization founded by a husband and wife duo determined to save the endangered seahorse population. Today, they are the largest seahorse farm in the world, they produce 95% of the pet seahorse population, they even return seahorses into the ocean. Their domestication of seahorses has prolonged the life as pets in people’s tanks at home. Some of the original customers still have their seahorses 16 years later! This is a great organic organization I will continue to support and I hope you will too. You can donate here and know that every donation, big or small, helps a lot.
As part of the interactive tour everyone learns about the organic farming methods the marine biologists have developed, everyone gets to see all age groups of seahorses (from a week old to fully mature), they get to feed the seahorses, taste seaweed, see how the ship seahorses to homes, and best of all everyone gets to hold a seahorse. Here are a few pictures from our day at the farm. The kids had a blast!
Afterwards, we were all hungry so we headed to nearby Ultimate Burger for a quick bite. These were seriously good burgers. And, the aioli that came with the fries was to die for!
Afterwards, we ventured over to Target to get me some ice packs for my ankle. At this point my ankle had swollen up so big that it looked like there was golf ball under my skin. While there I picked up an Iced Carmel Macchiato – Yum! We stalled for an hour by driving around Kona before heading over to our Body Glove Hawai’i Historical Dinner Cruise. This, for me, was the highlight of the trip; I could spend my whole life on a boat. Very few people know but my life long dream was to be a marine biologist and not, actually, a tech geek. Our tour took us up the Kona coast from Kona to Captain Hook’s monument at Kealakekua Bay. It was an amazing trip where we ate, drank and learned about Hawai’ian history. We even saw a four dolphins on the way back. Ethan was so excited and said, “This is the first time I got to see dolphins in the wild and it was awesome!” We all really enjoyed the trip. Ethan and I sat on the boat and had some pretty deep conversations over the three hour tour. We even talked about my mom and how we buried her at sea and why. We talked about my grandma, Ethan’s great-grandmother, and why life ends and begins again. It was the absolute best.
Here are a few pics from the cruise. Click on any to open them up in a larger view and easily click to the next from within the frame. Enjoy!
We ended the day with this sunset on the way back to Kings’ Land in Waikoloa from Kona. This is my attempt at practicing night photography so cut me some slack. 😉
Aloha!