Most of the time when I get in the car, I am setting out to drive for hours. It was nice to hop in the car and only have a 40 minute drive. Seeing the black sand was a little anticlimactic for us because we'd just come from the amazing green sand beach with a beautiful view and place to swim.

Punalu'u Beach is rocky and not really the best place for swimming.

When we got there, it was getting increasingly more overcast and all of our pictures came out dark.

We should have come to this beach FIRST! If we had, we would have been impressed with the black sand. Subsequent to our visit, I discovered that turtles like to hang out here. Had I known before our visit, we would have hung out and tried to find them!

Before we left Punalu'u Beach, we went up to the bathrooms and got cleaned up. We took outdoor showers and then changed clothes. While we were there, we ran into the girls from Brazil that we met on the way back from the Green Sand Beach. Matt asked them to take our picture in front of the welcome sign.

Our visit to Punalu'u Beach was brief - less than an hour. It was right around 4:00 PM when we left. Our next stop would be the Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. It was only 17.3 miles away.

As we were driving, it started to drizzle and the clouds were very low. We followed HI-11 and found the entrance to the park. The cost to enter the park was $15.00.

We asked the man if he thought it was worth it to pay to come into the park on such a dreary day. He recommended that we come back another day before noon because the weather would be better and there would be more to see.

As we were pulling away, I took a picture of the sign. Both of us were starting to get hungry so we decided to try to find a place to eat in Hilo.

Matt used his iPhone to look for some place yummy to eat. He found an Asian Fusion restaurant named Moon and Turtle. It was 40 minutes away from the park. Sounded good to me!