WHERE: Onomea Scenic Drive/Park Trails, just north of Hilo

WHAT TO SEE AND DO: If you've got just a morning or afternoon to spare from business or family affairs in Hilo town, Onomea is ideal. You can work the kinks out with an easy walk that hardly qualifies as a hike, take a picnic lunch to a wild viewpoint, visit the Hawai'i Tropical Botanical Gardens and holoholo back roads while daydreaming about buying a house on this beautiful coast.

On a recent visit, we headed north from Hilo on Highway 19, Mamalahoa Highway, and turned right at mile marker 7 on to the 4-mile Onomea Scenic Drive (Old Mamalahoa Highway). Slow down and breathe; the road is windy and narrow and there's lots to see and photograph. You'll encounter the south terminus of Onomea Park Trails (maintained by the state's Na Ala Hele program) on the right (the trick is shoehorning your car out of the way; there's no parking at this end; you can also enter from the botanical gardens and park there, but you'll have to pay).

Descend the path peeking through the hala and ironwoods at the view of bays and headlands. The first trail on your right leads to a compact pebbled shore. Back on the main trail, you pass the lower edge of the botanical gardens, then descend again, crossing a stream and rising up to a finger of land — the ideal picnic spot — overlooking Onomea Bay and the Onomea Arch, a broken headland, to the north. The area is favored by fishermen (we passed one with his two children, all chattering in Hawaiian). Back landward, the trail continues and becomes more slippery and tricky from here; it's called Donkey Trail because donkeys once ferried supplies up and down to Onomea landing and Kahili'i Village, destroyed in a 1946 tsunami.

WHERE TO EAT: On the way, stop at Papa'ikou for hot malassadas with peanut butter and jelly filling at Baker Tom's (from 6:30 a.m. Monday-Saturday; 7 a.m. Sunday), just off the highway. Further north on Onomea Scenic Drive, visit Low Store and Fruit Stand — an old-fashioned mom-and-pop of the kind that are becoming increasingly scarce. There, you can buy snacks, fresh fruit (guavas, 35 cents — my grandma would be turning in her grave that I actually PAID for a guava) or a very local-style plate lunch (the chili-kim chee plate tempted us mightily although we were planning lunch back in Hilo).

WHERE TO STAY: Hilo's just minutes away, but we took note of several vacation rental homes in the area, with views and ample space including a fully restored four-bedroom historic property built in the 1920s and owned by the Low Store folks ($175 a night); Onomea Hale Historic Home (2 bedrooms, $150 a night) and an oceanview estate (3 bedrooms, $165 a night). Check Vacation Rentals By Owner, vrbo.com.

WHAT TO LISTEN TO: KAPA 100.3 for contemporary Island music.

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.