Leslie Karst

Aloha, Hilo!

The coming of autumn heralds Robin’s and my annual return to Hilo, Hawai‘i, where we hunker down for six months avoiding the brutally cold and wet Santa Cruz winters. (Yes, that was a joke. But seriously, the weather is far more pleasant in the islands this time of year than in Northern California.)

As I write this, we’ve been back on the Big Island for two days, now, and this morning I went grocery shopping—always a treat for me here. First stop was the charming Hilo Farmers Market, where I purchased long beans (a Chinese variety of string been that’s about two feet long), fresh ginger, and a head of cabbage.

Next stop was KTA, my favorite local grocery store, for the bulk of my food items. It has an enormous Asian food section, and I was excited to buy a loaf of Japanese-style white bread, which I used to make some deliciously soft and fluffy buttered toast as soon as I got home.

Our back yard upon arrival had—as usual—become a dense jungle in the six months we’ve been gone, as there’s nothing like the tropics for growing things fast, including weeds. And the heavy rain that Hilo is famous for doesn’t hurt, either.

our back yard in the rain

But we love our home, which is in a lovely quiet neighborhood full of kids playing in the street and a host of neighbors with whom we’ve become close over the seventeen years we’ve lived here.

view of Hilo and the bay from the hill behind our house

Once we’re settled in, we’ll take a trip down to Puna, the most volcanically active part of the island, to see our beloved lava flows (which I write about extensively in my new Orchid Isle mystery, Molten Death). Here’s Miss Ziggy, having a little stroll along the coast near MacKenzie State Park—one of our favorite places on the island.

But for now, we’re sticking close to home, defrosting the freezer, pumping up our bicycles tires, wiping down the mold on the walls, whacking back towering plants and pulling weeds, and—promptly at five o’clock—observing cocktail hour on our front lānai.

Aloha, everyone!

Readers: Do you have a place you return to every year, be it for vacation, holidays, to visit family, or whatever? Is it difficult to make the transition–or to return home?

31 thoughts on “Aloha, Hilo!”

  1. Every year we try to go to Cape Cod, MA to visit my mother in law and take her to see the beach and out for lobster rolls. Then we head to NH to visit my son and 3 beautiful granddaughters and other family too. I miss home this time of year as here in Florida there is no real autumn. Enjoy Hawaii and your cocktails. Would love to go back to Hawaii, we did the Hawaiin cruise.

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    1. My sister was just in Maine last week for the fall colors and sent me photos of the lobster rolls they had–jealous! We don’t have much of a real autumn here in Hilo, either, though right at this moment it’s POURING rain.

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  2. I’m so jealous!! When I was 19, my parents bought a cottage in Bantam Lake, CT. We had it for 35 years until my dad died. Once I moved to CA and started my TV career, I got there much less often because I was always in pre-production during the summers. But we developed a CA tradition of going to Cambria for a few days between Xmas and New Years. There was a lull there too, but we revived the tradition last year and are booked again this year.

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  4. Welcome (to your other) home, Leslie! Sounds wonderful–particularly enjoyed your trip to the market. We don’t have quite the same variety here in NH–right now everyone here is realizing winter approacheth–and the soups and heavier foods are rolling in. (Hello, butternut squash, sigh. The house veggie at a lot of restaurants here for…months.) No established yearly trips at the moment, really, other than for holidays. That’s the way we (don’t) roll, lol.

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    1. I actually love winter veggies–brussels sprouts, butternut squash, etc.–but yes, after a couple months they can get kind of old. Here in Hilo we have the same summer-type veggies year round–bok choy, eggplant, long beans, taro–so I find myself pining for winter veggies like broccoli and brussells sprouts, lol.

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    1. I love the beach too, Jen, but I’m well past my camping years. Now I prefer heading to an Oregon lighthouse B&B or a hotel on the water.

      Leslie, you had me completely green with envy up until the mold part. We’re dry here in CO so I’ve never actually seen mold, but it still gives me the hookey-spooks. Funny story. When my daughter moved to Oregon, she called me one day about buying a de-humidifier. I was no help since I’d never heard of such a thing!

      I had to think about the cocktail hour, Leslie. Are you telling me you ONLY do happy hour in Hawaii and not CA? (Yeah, I didn’t think so!)

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      1. Yeah, mold is a real thing here. But then again, it’s also pretty real in Santa Cruz, too. But the upside to all that humidity is that we rarely have to apply moisturizer to our skin! As for cocktail hour, yes, it’s equally a tradition for us in both places!

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  6. I’m so jealous!! When I was 19, my parents bought a cottage in Bantam Lake, CT. We had it for 35 years until my dad died. Once I moved to CA and started my TV career, I got there much less often because I was always in pre-production during the summers. But we developed a CA tradition of going to Cambria for a few days between Xmas and New Years. There was a lull there too, but we revived the tradition last year and are booked again this year.

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  8. I’m jealous too! It sounds so lovely, even the food shopping. Our family went to the mountains, preferably the Rockies whenever we could when the kids were little, and just Cliff and I after they were gone. My trips now are mostly to writing conferences, and not even that for the last year or so. I hope to get back to some soon, though. Malice Domestic is held in the backyard of my daughter’s family, so a visit to them is included. Also, I have a granddaughter in Spain, so that requires trips, not quite annually, though I wish it were.

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  10. Welcome back home to Hilo, Leslie! You and Robin look absolutely at home and so happy to be there. ❤

    Your yard is gorgeous. Actually, everything is gorgeous! Enjoy the return to Hilo life–especially that lovely toast. YUM!

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  11. We seem to have several. For six years in a row in the late 1970s we went to New Orleans every Memorial Day for the long weekend. We were native Texans then and later transplanted Georgians due to work. First starting as just us and then by the sixth year with five other couples. Then that stopped, but we started again in 2012 or so for Thanksgiving with our friends from San Antonio (halfway for both of us) until Covid hit. Before that, we used to go to San Francisco for five or so years right after Thanksgiving in the 1980s for an Art Deco show and to enjoy it. We also stayed two months in the Florida Keys from 2003 until 2016 where we rented a house for us and the pup. Our friends from San Antonio also came for about a week to visit during most of those years. We also went to the Blue Ridge Mountains and Pigeon Forge for about 6 or more years to the Shades of the Past Car Show with our 1937 Ford Roadster. Our friends from San Antonio also met us there for a couple of years. Last but not least was our visits to Savannah. We went there for about six years also with our pups. Good food, good ambiance, good vibes, good history, and good shopping and touring. But Covid ruined all of that and we have not gone anywhere since. We have never been to Hawaii and envy you all for having a house there. Mele Kalikimaka soon!

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  13. Our place is surely Scoresbysound in NE Greenland. We live in an area with a very mild climate, directly at the sea. It’s nice in the summer as it gets not too warm but much too mild during winter. We need snow and Ice and even rain and fog. So we enjoy every winter either in Arctic Scandinavia or Greenland.
    We had to live in Florida for a while but couldn’t stand the climate there. Before we lived several years in Montreal, Katmandu, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.
    Now we really like it best living in a little village on the English coast. Stockholm and Hamburg are cities we love very much too and we visit them from time to time.
    All the best
    The Fab Four of Cley
    🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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      1. I hope so also, but we are getting older. I am 76 and Hubby Dearest will be 78 in January. It is just not as easy to make those longer drives. Back in the day when I was young, I thought nothing of driving 525 miles from Harlingen, Texas (our hometown) to Fort Worth, Texas. 7-8 hours used to not bother us then but just sitting in the car for an hour is hard on the old knees. I flew to visit my BFF and relatives in Flower Mound, Texas from ATL and the travel was an all-day event. Drive to the closest MARTA station at Northridge is 45 minutes from our house. Then catch MARTA which runs every 15 minutes and takes 45 minutes to get to the airport and be there two hours prior. The TSA line took almost an hour (it was Saturday before Memorial Day). Then to the gate which luckily was the T Terminal this time. Then wait to board, get everyone boarded, fly two hours, lose an hour from EST to CST. Get from the gate to outside to meet my friends. Luckily no checked bag. Just too much anymore. Hubby won’t even do that. We drive on our trips so we can take our dog with us. I can’t imagine how long it takes you to fly to Hawaii just from California. Flying used to be a fun, exciting adventure, but no longer.

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        1. You are right, flying is a nuisance nowadays.
          We drive a lot around in the UK as Dinas is a photographer. Driving 5 to 6 hours is fine for us as we drive a comfy Volvo and we both like driving. For my 79th birthday, we are going to the very south of England next month and in January we are going to Scotland for snow and frost. I like driving on snow.

          But we don’t go somewhere where we have to fly to. We sometimes need a ferry to go to the continent. But that’s comfy.

          All the best
          The Fab Four of Cley
          🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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