The plan for today was to climb Diamond Head. This is not as simple as it should be. There really isn't sufficient parking there, so they just stop admitting people to the park. We tried to get in, but were turned around. We decided to try and kill some time by driving around the outside.
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| Where we stopped to take some pictures at a nice overlook, and where some jackass got upset because we were standing in a location that blocked his view of "the surfers," all of which were little more than tiny dots on the ocean below. Get a better hobby than "spying on people from my car like some kind of freak" jackass. |
Anyway, the second attempt was no more successful, so the real advice isn't "get there early so you can hike before the sun rises too much and makes it hot" it's "get there early because otherwise you won't be able to hike at all." I don't remember this much trouble the last time I tried to hike it, but maybe that was a weekday.
Alternate plan: Makapu'u Point Lighthouse Trail. It was also crazy busy with no place to park. Except for the one open space that suddenly appeared after we skipped around a Nissan that was stalking some imaginary space. It seemed like this would work out, even though the breeze is a bit inconsistent on the trail.
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| But there is a nice view that I should make a mosaic of. |
However, there are no restrooms anywhere, so when that became an issue, we decided to cut the hike short (apparently it's only 1.5 miles roundtrip, but since it's mostly all uphill, it seems worse). The next stop: Costco.
Which really is a good place to stop while on vacation. They sell local stuff at Costco prices, and although the checkout is always busy, they have pretty decent pizza you can have for lunch. Solves many problems at once.
Then more beach time in the afternoon, most of which I didn't take pictures of, not even when Ramona met three Japanese grandmothers in the ocean, and began to talk and splash with them, despite not knowing a mutual language.
The sun was a bit excessive today, as there were no mitigating clouds. One result of this was a desire to be lazy and not drive very far for dinner. Since there's an Eggs and Things on the next block over from the hotel, this wasn't too hard to do.
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| Kalbi and eggs. I still don't really like eggs. The kalbi was good, though. |
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| And a nice sunset. |
Followed by a bit more Pokemon.
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| I found a Pineco. |
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| And hatched a Larvitar. |
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| Stuck my on-brand Cloyster into the gym we defeated. |
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| And then fought a Xatu that wouldn't give up and stay in the ball. |
Unfortunately this is their last night here, and after the hectic days before, it was good to have one that was somewhat more focused on relaxing. Let's see how much we can stick into the last few hours tomorrow.
Since we had planned on hiking today, I froze four bottles of water overnight, and planned to use them as after-hike drinks, as well as keeping other things that shouldn't be frozen cold. I took one of my canvas shopping bags, lined the bottom with a towel, put in all the stuff to keep cold, and then covered it with a second towel. I assumed this would stay cool for the hike, but didn't think it'd last much longer than that.
When I got home tonight, three of the bottles still had significant chunks of ice in them. That means that over the course of about 13 hours, there wasn't enough energy transfer from the outside to my trunk and then into the "cooler" I'd made. A bottle of water contains 500 ml, so 500g, which requires 166500 J of energy to melt (ignoring temperature changes within a given state). This works out to an energy transfer of about 3.5 W. I was unable to find a useful table to compare this to before giving up on writing more of this post.
