We generally drive into the Mauna Lani Resort to park anytime we want to walk along the shore, but we decided to try the parking lot near the Petroglyph Trail and walk south along the coast to the Orchid and then to Mauna Lani. It is a beautiful walk and in case you are wondering is perfectly kosher, as all coastline in Hawaii is public property, so you cannot get kicked off the beaches (as long as you don’t use any of the resort chairs- and still sometimes they don’t kick you off for that either).
As a side-note, I did get kicked off one time at the Mauna Kea years ago on a really windy day where there were no tourists whatsoever on the beach, just me and their nice comfortable recliners. Lying on the beach kicked up so much sand in my mouth and eyes that I thought maybe they would be gracious with me and allow me to stay on the chair, but to my horror the man with the orange shorts came along, asked me to get off the chair, so I stood up and sat back down one foot from the chair on the sand, while ALL of the other chairs were lined up on the beach without any occupants. Can you say, “second-class citizen”? Yeah, I know, I didn’t pay to stay at the hotel, but how about a little sympathy for the sand in my eyes?
We parked in a new spot, which allowed us to scope out the park on the coast, which turns out to be a stellar place for a picnic with picnic tables or even a BBQ as they have grills. The spot is just south of Puako, so there is tons of coral there which makes for a neat (albeit rocky) coastline, and great snorkeling. We’ll give the BBQ thing a shot and let you know how it works. Incidentally our good friends Kelly and Scott got married on this beach December 2007.