St. Paddy's Day on Ali'l Drive

We began this lovely day by walking, as we did last Sunday, to Living Stones Church for the 9 am service. We took our rain ponchos for the 2 mile round trip walk on Ali'i Drive and wondered what 'contingency plans' a church, which has most of its seating and a significant amount of audio-visual equipment outside, has on a day when there's a 40% chance of rain in the morning.  Those plans, which didin't have to be put into action, included heavy plastic tarps draped over every piece of sound equipment, every screen, every speaker.  Happy to say, our ponchos, have stayed packed away for the whole day!  Wonderful, blessed service!  If you are coming to visit the Kona area, or have friends who are, we can highly recommend the warm fellowship of this non-denominational gathering on the beach!

We then walked the 3.6 miles round trip from Royal Sea Cliff into town on Ali'l Drive, and, at one point, Ali'i Drive was closed to traffic for a 'MayFest' type of gathering.  It was so fun to browse the wares, listen to great music (even some BLUEGRASS! be still my heart!) and just people watch......

 

Mid-afternoon we went to Splashers (the open-air place we had breakfast on our first morning here) and enjoyed a great meal......another local fish we'd never had.....ono.......plus, I think there's some local ordinance about HAVING to order a mai tai when you're here and since I'd never had one and since we're just a couple of days away from being 'homeward bound' and since I really needed one of those cute little unbrellas........

 

Tomorrow we're headed up to the Waikoloa Beach area for some scenic walking and exploring, trying to soak it all up before we start packin' our bags for our Tuesday departure.