Venus and the Sun

We had the idea a couple of weeks ago...we would rent a cabin at Hapuna Beach State Park on July 5th to watch the planet Venus move between the earth and the sun. I was amazed to find one cabin left, so I quickly made our reservation and we had our first fun trip of the summer booked!

 This is Hapuna Beach...it's about 90 miles from our house, on the other side of the island.

 The lone boy in the ocean is Kyle...

 Our bella Stella

 Our cabin....look! we found one of the boy's friends from school!! He and his Dad had come to watch the celestial event as well. Later that afternoon we were joined by another friend from school and his family. It was a super fun day at the ocean playing with friends, boogy boarding, and watching Venus slowly inch it's way across the sun. We had special eclipse sun viewing glasses and we shared them with other peeps on the beach. Many had brought telescopes with sun filters. We watched the transit on a UH telescope that broadcast the image on a computer screen.

I was pleased with the cabins. The were clean and simple and had a breathtaking view of the ocean.

Sungazers in the distance...and then I tried to get a picture of Mauna Kea's Observatories in this picture (below), but I can't see them now.

Venus has passed. Yes, it just looked like a black dot, but I found it really surreal to see a whole planet between earth and the sun. The distance and size of it all is hard to fathom, but seeing that black dot helped to put it all into perspective.

Below...my little venus between me and the sun.

Stella, their friend, and Kyle...the last in our party to leave the beach.

Good night sun...

Good morning sun...next day...looking left...

looking center...see those rocks? It's low tide in this picture, but the day before when the tide was higher we snorkeled there and saw some honu (hawaiian green sea turtles). We also saw honu just swimming by us when we were just swimming/walking around in the water.

looking right...there were lots of swimmers that swam from the left point (above) to the right point (below) and then back for a mile swim.