I've been dreaming about the beach at Mauna Kea for over a year. I'd hoped to visit last year when we were here but it just never worked into our schedule.
Kaunaoa Beach is located at the Mauna Kea resort. There is public parking for 30 cars at the resort. If you have your heart set on a day at Kaunaoa Beach it is important to arrive early. When you arrive you stop at the guard shack and get a parking pass, if you arrive too late the parking passes will be gone.
We left our condo at 8:00 and arrived at Mauna Kea by 8:45, the resort is about 30 miles north of where we were staying. We stopped at the guard shack and the friendly attendant gave us our golden ticket (aka. parking pass). The road to the parking lot goes through a lovely golf course. Dan thought it was pretty funny that a poor guy was in the trees searching for his lost golf ball.
From the parking lot it is a short walk on a paved path down to the beach. As we walked I was nervous that the beach wouldn't live up to the hype. When we arrived at the end of the path and stepped foot on the beach, all my worries faded away! The beach at Mauna Kea is beautiful! The sand is white and the water is a beautiful turquoise color. It is definitely worth getting an early start to visit this amazing beach!
The kids didn't waste any time!
Dan and the kids played in the waves for an hour or so. Dan tried snorkeling by the rocks on the left side of the beach, he said it was pretty murky and he felt like it was too wavy. That probably had a lot to do with the ocean conditions today. I read a few chapters in my book while enjoying the beauty of the beach. We were lucky and saw a sea turtle today! The turtle was just floating in the surf, the sea turtles are one of my favorite things about the Big Island.
The kids decided that they needed to try out the sand toys that we picked up at Target last night. They worked together to build a sand castle.
After a few hours of beach fun everyone was hungry so we ate our picnic lunch. You just can't beat picinics on the beach! If you plan to picnic on the beach be sure to bring wipes for your hands so that you don't end up with sand in your sandwich, we also bring a grocery bag to put our trash in so that it can be thrown away easily.
Here is my happy boy eating lunch on the beach
We stayed at the beach until noon, originally we thought we might stop at Kua Bay on our way back to the condo but both kids said they wanted to head back to the condo instead.
As we drove down the coastline we noticed that the surf was pretty big. Our original plan was to rest for a bit and then head to Kahaluu Beach for some snorkeling. We decided to check out Kahaluu before returning to the condo because I had a suspicion that the surf might be too big for good snorkeling. The waves were definitely pounding, we saw a lot of surfers and boogie boarders. My suspicions were correct and the normally calm Kahaluu was pretty rough, we decided to save snorkeling for another day.
We got back to the condo and had a relaxing afternoon. We napped and relaxed. Dan and the kids went to the pool for an hour, my kids have a blast down at the pool and seem to meet new kids every time they go.
We ate dinner out on the lanai and enjoyed watching the waves crash into the rocks. After dinner we watched some brave souls boogie board in the big waves right out in the bay. They were a lot braver than I'd ever be, the waves were big but even more scary than the waves is the rocky shoreline! It was fun to watch them catch the big waves.
Today was a great day! I can't help feeling like this vacation is going by way too fast. We are enjoying every minute!
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