For a couple of years, what kept us from going to Hawaii was the fact that whether camping or staying at hotels and B and B's we would have to reserve each and every night's accommodation in advance. This is a hassle for several reasons. The most obvious one is just the sheer work of researching, reserving, possibly pre-paying at 20 or 30 different establishments, and then keeping track of what they all are.

The next hassle also exists for motorists but becomes much more aggravated for cyclists. That is, with 20 or 30 places all lined up, it is imperative that you make it to each one, on the appointed night and none other. So something like bad weather or some sort of physical or mechanical breakdown, or finding a reason to stay an extra day in some wonderful place spells disaster for a lot of planning, not to mention pre-payments.

This time around we thought we had a pretty good answer to the reservation problem. First off, we would camp a lot more. For this we were counting on Dodie's knees now being in fairly good shape, allowing a lot of "fluid" movements into and out of the tent. Next, we had noticed that the county and state governments, who had made such a big deal of charging exorbitant camping fees and demanding advance prepaid bookings for them, never actually bothered to dispatch any staff to the beach parks to check up on the campers. Finally, we planned to camp a lot of days at Volcano National Park, where although they do come around daily, the rates are at least reasonable.

These optimistic thoughts fell apart as we actually launched the project of figuring out our 30 overnights for this trip. We would start at Kona, and with the need to unpack our Fridays and stash the suitcases they came in, we would have to start at a hotel. Only the Kona Seaside seemed to have a spot for storing the cases. "Uncle Billy's", for example, in a most un-uncle like manner would not even begin to consider the possibility. There are a fair number of B&B's around, but since we would be arriving in town close to midnight, we did not think it fair to ask any private home to stay up for us.

All the booking services quoted the price at the Kona Seaside as $140, which is a hefty price tag for basic accommodation. The Seaside's own website mentions a $95 rate, but that turns out to be just for locals or for "workers". Pressed a little, the Seaside did come up with a $115 rate for us, but we are not sure which magic hat that came out of.

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With the Seaside locked in for both our arrival and departure, we set about mentally circling the island, thinking about where we could stay. Last year we had spotted and stayed at the Manago, a rambling old (historical) place in Captain Cook. This time we scored the $38 shared bath option, which is actually cheaper than officially camping in a county park!

Rounding the southern point of the island, we figured to camp at Manuka state wayside, and at Punaluu county park. So far so good. But our big thing was the plan to then climb on the Mamalahoa Highway up to the Volcano Park. There, we knew, was cheap camping that would make a fine base for several days of cycling the area. But checking the national park web site revealed that the camping was indefinitely closed for "improvements". A call to Volcano House, which administers the camping, revealed that the improvements entailed the felling of dangerous trees, that this work had not yet begun and therefore would indefinitely not finish, so no camping.

We suspected that if we just turned up we could find a place. For instance there is a large covered shelter at the campground. Surely they would not be dropping any trees onto that. But here comes the frustrating thing about Hawaii. We could not gamble on just turning up, because if it did not work out, any nearby indoor accommodation would surely be booked. So we abandoned our thoughts of camping at Volcano Park, and booked a place in Volcano town.

Now we began to think, with so many indoor reservations, maybe dragging the camping gear along was foolish. That would mean mentally going back down the mountain and looking for B&B's near South Point. Somehow we just could not face up to that, especially given the high nightly cost of almost all bookings. so we just carried on around the island, setting up a mixture of camping and indoor options.

It turned out that there were not really a lot of camping options in the places we needed, so we once again landed with a tour involving mostly hotels. Not only did we manage through this to commit ourselves to over $US 3000 of hotel costs, but we spent twelve solid hours on the computer to achieve it. That very well could be the twelve toughest hours of the tour!