Serene, pastoral, comforting. We are not country people, and I had some uneasiness about being too rural. That feeling was gone the instant my (adult) children leaped out of the car into the pasture to feed the goats. Lounging on the lanai with the field gently sloping toward the coast, with the wide expanse of the Pacific in view, there was a sense no hotel could ever match. Going into Hilo was literally just around the corner and provided plenty of neat local dining experiences. The Lyman and Pacific Tsunami museums both worth a couple of hours. Virtually next door is the Hawaiian Tropical Botanical Garden, far better than you can imagine (we went there twice) and must be considered one of the top 5 experiences of the entire island. In addition, Kurtis bent over backwards to help us recover some items we left behind