Most often when we set off on a tour, we have a fairly good idea of where we are going, but we have no idea about where we will stay each night. We often set up approximate benchmarks, though. Those would be something like "If we don't reach Frankfurt by May 15, we had better get moving faster." That would be on trips that are about 90 days. But this Hawaii thing is just 24 days. What's more, because it is Hawaii, reservations are required for each and every night - even for camping. So the whole thing in principle is tightly orchestrated.

There is still some uncertainly floating around, though. For example, we can not predict what the volcano will do. And we could get some equipment or health failure, or maybe just find that the volcano or Hilo or something is boring or extra exciting, and that we want to make the adjustments needed to not go with the plan.

The map below shows our general route. It does not try to accurately show any smaller roads we take, and though I was trying at first to show each day's stage by different colours, this quickly fell apart.

There are of course lots of small roads all over the Island, but mainly the way around involves highways 11 and 19. We will start at the Kona airport and take a taxi to a hotel in Kona. Then it's off counter clockwise, passing in turn the coffee country near Captain Cook, the South Point, and the desert in the lee of Mauna Loa, an to the Volcano National Park. The park offers a large number of hiking trails, fine dining, and volcano interpretation displays. After several days at Volcano, we will head off for several days in Hilo. Hilo offers some great attractions, like a macadamia nut factory and a rainforest zoo. From Hilo we can take a jeep tour onto the Saddle Road and up to the Mauna Kea. If conditions are right, we can also go by car or bike to Puna/Pahoa.

From Hilo, it's up around the jungly and remote east coast, including pushing the bikes up to see Akaka Falls. Finally we will pass through the ranchland area of Waimea, and head into the northernmost corner, at Hawi, before circling back around to Kona.

The whole way around, according to Google Maps is no more than 500 km. With getting lost and general exploring, we will no doubt go further, but it would be hard to really go a lot further. It means we should have time to more fully absorb the environments and history of the place. That will be a bit of a switch for us.