Hawai'i - Day 8

Last day in Hawaii! Boo hoo.

Today we got up kind of early, and decided almost immediately against going back to the seven sacred pools. No paticular reason for it, we just wanted to see something new before "it" got crowded.

So today we took a nice hike at the Waianapanapa State park, which has a 3 mile round trip trail along the lava rock coast with jungle on 3 sides and crystal blue ocean on the other side. It really was a beautiful hike, although trecherous. That lava rock is about as sharp as can be, and it was everywhere. One missed step could put you in a hostpital rather quickly. We didn't miss any steps, although we had a couple of near falls. Molly got a couple of bruised ankles from tipping rocks/lost footing. I cut up my hands farily well just grabbing for a hand hold in a couple of places. It was worth it, though, and I think you'll agree when you see the videos and pictures.

After that we were hot as hell, and ate a light picnic lunch before leaving to locate a watering hole/beach. We found a couple of good spots, and went to a place called the "Venus Pool"... a local hangout because it is not readily accessable from a parking lot, you need to have a bit of nerve and a decent pair of shoes to get to it. But the pool itself is remarkable. We forgot to take a picture, though. There were about 15 local teenagers there jumping into the pool from the surrounding cliffs, some of them rather daringly. We, in the end, opted not to get into it... just a little too old and a little too far from a hospital for cliff jumping.

We ended up at Kiko beach, which was nice. Very shallow for 100 yards or more. The surf was a little rough. But we cooled down, and that was our goal.

We tried to buy some fresh fish from the back of a pickup truck. All they had was Mahi Mahi and it was in a $20 bag, which looked to be 15 fillets... too much food for one day left in Hawaii.

We headed to the store to get some Ahi, and I picked up a beer, and molly got some nuts. We're back at the cabana now. We took a shower, and are likely in for the night.

Tomorrow we head back to the airport along that infamous Hana Highway... people are such wimps.

Aloha all, and enjoy the pictures!

Hawaii - Day 8

Hawai'i - Day 7

Today we got up rather leisurely. We awoke at about 7AM, but really didn't get moving until about 8:30, finally leaving the cabana at 9AM. We should have gotten going much sooner, because we knew that the tour buses from Central and Western Maui would get to Hana at about noon. But its Maui... hard to feel pressured to do much of anything.

We went to the Eastern side of the State park named Haleakala, the same park with the giant volcano. This time we got to see the tropical side of the park. The other, was a desert in sharp contrast to the beauty of this side. We hiked up a 1.8 mile hike with total 800 ft elevation. It was rather warm and, of course, extremely humid. The good and bad thing about this park is that it is surrounded by trees. The good thing about that is that you stay shaded for most of the hike, sheltering you from the equatorial sun. However, the bad thing about this is that the air is rather stagnant, and you don't get much of a breeze. The summit of the hike is an amazing waterfall, that I would guess to be at least 600 ft tall. So the trail itself goes along the stream that is created by this waterfall. We kept passing deep pools in the volcanic rock as we went toward the waterfall. The last third of the hike was an AMAZING bamboo forest. We thought of Ang Lee when filming "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". The forest was so thick that it almost completely blocked out the sun. The hike was pretty flat at this point, and the park service provided us with a boardwalk through this bamboo forest. We also found some berries that looked like a cross behind a raspberry and a strawberry... and we both tried it before we knew if it was safe to eat. Team Norris always things with the gut. It didn't taste like much.. definately not like a strawrapsberry, more like sweet dirt. The forest ranger assured us that it was safe to eat, but didn't have a name for them, other than "berries". Go National Park Service! When we finally reached the climax of the hike we were awarded with an amazing view... and discovered that the waterfall was easily accesable from trail.. in fact the trail went basically right into the water. This goes right against what we had been told by people hiking down... that there was no water access, and nothing to swim in. We didn't see a single wet person coming down. When we did reach the top we saw a few people swimming in the little pool under the waterfall, but not as many as you would think. There were 5 people in the pool and 30 people watching them in the pool. Were they scared? Were they cold? Was the water contaminated? We decided that they were just dumb. The hike got us very warm, so Molly and I, of course, jumped right in and immediately soaked ourselves under the cool water. We stayed for 20 minutes or so and decided to head back down to beat the major rush to the 7 sacred pools.

The hike down was much easier and faster than the hike up. We didn't really get hot because were still pretty wet.

At the bottom we got our our picnic lunch of ham and jarlsburg sandwiches and fruit juice. Molly suprised me with a lemon-mango-shortbread cookie which was yummy. After lunch we lathered our tired bodies with lots and lots of sunscreen and headed to the short trail (1/2 mile level hike round trip) to the 7 sacred pools. When we got them it was already crowded. However the most inaccessable, and highest of the pools was pretty much vacant. Just one couple up there... so obviously we went up there. It was the only pool not filled with teenagers and screaming kids. I should say that it is also the largest of the pools, being about 60 yards in diameter, roughly, with a large waterfall at one end, and drained into the second largest pool at the other end (via another waterfall). The trail to get up to this other pool was challenging with flip flops (no, not molly... she, for once, had proper water proof climbing sandals). The pool was about 68-70 degrees... cool compared to the 85 degree air, but felt wonderful. Molly immediately swam for the waterfall, and I followed. The current was strong... Molly was strong enough of a swimmer to reach it that way, I edged along the rocks. Some of the previously mentioned teenagers saw us up there, and decided that was the place to be, so it got pretty croweded not long after we got up there. The sky started to look a little ominous, so we decided to take the hike down before it started to rain.

It started to rain before got all of the way down, and I broke a flip flop... just my luck. So the rocks were slick, my flip flop was flip floppy... but we took it slow and made it down ok. It started to rain harder, and then everyone left. A rain storm in hawaii is not like a rain storm in Kansas... they only last 15 minutes tops, and its nice and warm. However, every other person there was shivering and cold... Molly and I were just fine, so we decided to explore some other pools, nearer to the ocean. We sat and enjoyed this wonder of nature for about 15 minutes, and eventually stopped raining and people started pouring back in, at a much faster rate than before... Tour groups. These people were the biggest babies I've ever seen, with sweatshirts and rain gear and constantly asking other idiots how cold the water is, and one person described it as "glacial"... dumbass. The hike back to the car was bombarded with questions about how much futher the pools (only 1/4 mile, level, easy walk.. remember?) and if it was worth the walk? WORTH THE WALK? Why the heck did you get on the damn bus if you didn't want to see the stupid pools? Whatever, I fear no hike... only stupid people in their SUVs on the road on the way back. The 9 mile drive from the park to your cabana took almost an hour. And we followed a mother f*@#ing tour bus.

We stopped at the store and got some ice cream and looked for replacment flip flops for my giant feet... with no avail. Oh, and we also ate a hot-dog. It tasted good after all of the hiking and swimming and white knuckled driving.

Came back to the cabana and opened some wine, got into the hot tub, overlooking the ocean, and smelling the amazing tropical flowers here. We also took a little tour of the grounds here to see all of the different fruits and flowers they have. (This place sells exotic flowers also).

And that is the day! Tonight we plan on cooking up some Ahi, with a light alfredo pasta and some very ripe avacados. One of the gardeners here offered to bring us down a couple of papayas, fresh off of the tree today. To bed early tonight to hit the seven pools again early tomorrow, and then one more hike tomorrow afternoon, on our last day of vacation.

Enjoy the pictures!

Hawaii - Day 6

Hawai'i - Day 6

Well everyone, great news. First, lets get the big news out of the way:

I am a godfather

Heather and Seb just had their second child: Lucas Xavier Dufourmontelle. 7lbs 12oz, 19 inches long. Somehow they just happened to catch us when we were in the town of Hana getting some fresh fish for dinner tonight. I'm so happy I could burst. This means that I will be coming into KC here this next week sometime. I'm very excited to see everyone.

Now, for the less important news: I have internet, kind of. By some miracle of Hawaii, I picked up some very, very faint wireless signal from the porch of our cabana, so I am getting a blog in as quickly as I can.

Today started pretty early: 6:15am. We wanted to get the car packed and ready to go early so that we could beat the huge crowds on the road to Hana. It is a really wild barely 2 lane road that twists as much as the last video we put on the blog, but narrower and more traffic on it going both ways. Every mile or so is a spectacular view (as you'll see from the photos). We could see the ocean every once in a while with different views at each stop. Sometimes it was a high up pull out with green cliffs on both sides, sometimes it was a penninsula, and other times it was just a beautiful beach.

Anyway, we got on the road just after 7:15 and started toward the center of the island where the road to Hana starts. We got to the small town of Paia by 8am, and were all set to pick up some pastries and morning goodies (we had a small breakfast of cereal and fresh fruit already). However, nothing in town was open until 8:30. I didn't want to wait, so we found one little tiny coffee shop open and got Josh a coffee. We went on and quickly found our first stop.

We were excited to walk to a waterfall/swimming hole, and started off. We found a little set of water falls, but decided to continue on (despite the fact that there was a rope for swinging and jumping into the pool. We kept walking and passed about 8-10 people carrying cameras, but not wet. We weren't sure what to expect, since we thought the point was to swim and no one was wet. We finally passed a couple who were friendly, so we asked about the falls. They said it was ahead, but you had to "get wet" to see it. No problem for us! We walked a while more, not running into many other people when we saw it. We had to wade about 100 yards tops in a river bed that only went to our knees. We walked to a huge pool with a 30 foot waterfall, equipped with a rope swing next to the falls. No one was there and no one had been in it. We were slightly leery, but since we are adventurers, we went for it. It was soooooo cool. The water was about 70 degrees, but felt cool and it was deeper than I could reach in the middle. I immediately swam for the rope and found a cairn of rocks for jumping off of. It was fun, but unfortunately, I was not tall enough/strong enough to keep my whole body out of the water the whole way to the falls and splashed into the water early. Josh loved it too. We had the whole place to ourselves for about 25min. Then, people started coming and noticed that we were in the water. Apparently, everyone was waiting for someone to be brave enough to go first. From then on, as we swam/walked out, we passed about 50 people. No one else today would have a picture free of people in it. We were so lucky.

From there, we continued on, but kept stopping whenever our guide book told us to stop, or we found something beautiful. our next major stop was at the arboretum (sp??) where we saw a ton of kinds of exotic plants-hibiscus, ginger, and the coolest tree-a gum tree that looked like it was painted lots of colors. We also found another swimming hole (minus a rope), and again, many people looked, but none swam (except a family we saw on the way up coming down in their suits). Again, the water wasn't particularly cold and it was easy to get too, I don't know what is wrong with people... Anyway, we had a good swim and cooled off quite a bit (the humidity was very high here and hot). We got back in the car and kept driving from swimming hole to swimming hole. We took LOTS of pictures.

We finally got just outside of Hana and found a stand that sold the pastries I missed this morning. I had a coconut cake with coconut pudding filling. Josh had a oatmeal raisin cookie that was to die for. We were happy, but still hungry for lunch (everywhere that was supposed to have food was either really busy, or closed on the way to Hana). We decided to splurge on a lunch (and eat dinner in as usual) and ate at the very expensive Hotel Maui-Hana. It was pretty good. Josh had a 3 course dinner of cold avacado and crab soup, pan fried marlin, and flourless chocolate cake for desert. I had a barbeque sandwich of local pig, which was good but fatty. I also had a Mai-tai, which was so strong I immediately handed Josh the car keys. Oi! We headed to our new hotel/cabana room to check in.

A few miles outside of Hana was our oasis. This cabana is in the middle of a fruit farm/rainforest looking area. We are the only building in sight and very secluded. We also had a 2 person hot-tub on the porch. We can see the ocean from our bed/living room/porch and are surrounded by ginger, hibiscus, and papaya trees. It is soooooo beautiful. We checked in, unloaded the car and sat on the bed looking at the view (at least that's what us young people call it these days!). We decided that we needed milk, bread, and our fish from costco somehow went bad, so we set off for the only 2 markets (literally) in town.

Boy, those markets were quite an experience! I don't know how the local people do it. It was like a camping store, not many varieties and not many things to buy. Also, one of them was a grocery and hardware store combined. It was wild.

With fish, milk, and bread in hand, we headed back to the cabana. We immediately fixed a drink and sat in the hot tub. Wow, that was totally worth it!!! Now we found a signal and are blogging. We intend to start early again and head to the state park (the one from earlier in the trip, but the East side) before the beach crowd drives in (it takes about 2-4 hours to get here, only 52 miles away, if that tells you how slow, curvy, and scenic it is...). We'll try to blog again tomorrow!

Enjoy the pictures!

Hawaii Day 6

Hawai'i - Day 5

Well, fans, this could be the last day of the blog. There are no guarantees that our next hotel, near the city of Hana, has internet... we're betting that it does not.

Regardless, today was a very, very busy day. We booked a tour for a snorkel outing:

http://www.mauicharters.com/fourwinds.html

We got up at 5:30, ate a light breakfast and headed to the harbor to check in at 7AM. Molly immediately grabbed a seat (pushing kids and old ladies aside, and intimidating everyone else with "ba-ba-ba-ba"... just kidding) on the top deck at the front of the boat. One of the best seats on the boat, for sure. The boat served a breakfast of Bagels, fresh fruit, coffee and juice... and it was all you can eat, for the most part, so we really dug in. We left the harbor at 7:30 AM, and headed out to Mookolini island, a little cresent shaped island to the south of Maui... about 45 minutes boat ride. Along the way we got up close an personal with the hump-back whales that breed and give birth in the warm waters of the southern Maui bay. Of course, we got lots of pictures of them. Also, along the way, Molly started not feeling well, as though she couldn't get a burp out, she excused herself to go to the restroom, and came back 10 minutes later to inform me that she vomited over the side of the boat... and now feels much better. Wow!

The open-bar opened up at 8AM, so I started my morning with 2 bagels, 2 coffees and Miller lite. Molly had the Chardonnay. Maybe it was the cheap Chardonnay that made her sick? A crewman suggested she was pregnant.

When we finally reached the island, we went through all of the various saftey tips associated with snorkeling and set us loose in the bay of this tiny island. There were about 6 other tours here, but it really didn't feel too crowded. The tour rents the use of an underwater digital camera for $40. At first we decided not to do it, but then changed our minds at the last minute, and got one of the 7 that were available (thank god). Apparently these cameras hold about 320 pictures, or so. We were determined to get our money's worth, and I think we did. All of our pictures took up 2 CDs. Some of them are better than others, and eventually I'll weed out the really crappy ones.

At first Molly really freaked out with the snorkeling. Something about her not being able to get used to the idea that you can't breath using your nose, only your mouth. She got panickey, and for a few minutes I didn't think she was going to do more than 5 minutes. However, she calmed down quickly and really had a great time. Of course, being her father's daughter, she got a foot cramp and had to take off one of her fins toward the end. She also used the slide off the boat. We have pictures of all of this, too ( of course. ) For lunch they grilled up hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken breasts, and it all tasted really good, even for 10 AM. After lunch we got back into the water for another 30 minutes, then loaded back into the boat and headed back to shore. On the way back to shore we got some AMAZING footage of the whales and some pictures of sea turtles.

We finally got back into shore at about 12:30PM. We were not tired at all, so we decided to go on a hike near the volcano we've already been up twice. This it is less desert and more rainforest (so the guide book told). We got up to about 3200 feet (with more than a half a tank of gas this time). At the top there is an unpaved section of the road before you even hit the trailhead... We decided not to do the hike for 4 reasons: 1. It was raining 2. The clouds/fog were so thick you could barely see more than 15 feet in front of the car 3. The sign at the top of the hill clearly stated 4 wheel drive only on the unpaved part and 4. It was pig hunting season, and there were cars parked there. The last thing I needed to do was get mistaken for a pig and have some native hawaiian make a luau out of my ass. Wasted about an hour out of our day on that.

We headed back towards the hotel and decided to eat a late lunch (vs an expensive Hawaiian dinner) at a place that we had read good things about. The food itself was not that great, but I got some oysters on the half-shell. I travel 5 and a half hours by plane to eat oysters that they flew in from British Columbia, Washington and Oregon the day before. Nice. After lunch we went downstairs to the poster shop that had the Mucha prints and had one of the ladies show them to us. We had tried to see them the day before but they had moved them to a gallery, but were told they would be back today. They were amazing. And amazingly priced. Thank god I'm not rich yet, because I could easily see myself collecting that. There were two pieces that we both loved. Not very big, but well over a hundred years old. $750 per each piece.

We did some shopping, then headed back to the hotel to swim in the ocean, riding the waves into the shore (and getting sand in some very unmentionable places in the process) and watched the sun set into the pacific. It was beautiful.

Anyway, that's all I have. Oh, I must mention to Linze and Josh that the number of turn-arounds that we have done this trip are quite astronomical. Not helped by driving a Chevy Aveo. We'll do a couple of extra tomorrow in your honor!

Anyway, enjoy the pictures!

Hawaii - Day 5 (part 1)

Hawaii - Day 5 (part 2)

Hawai'i - Day 4

Sorry for taking so long to blog yesterday's events. It was a relatively uneventful day, overall (especially when compared to the previous day.)

We leisurely awoke at 8AM, after going to bed at 8PM. It felt really nice to finally get adjusted to Hawaii time, and catching up on some much needed sleep. We ate a light breakfast of Bagels and Jarlsburg cheese, Kashi (cereal) and a fruit salad that Molly made from fresh local produce; It was great. Afterward we embarked upon a mission to get me a coffee, which was unsuccessful for over 2 hours. When we gave up, we were at a local mall: The Jackson Cannery, thus named because it used to literally be a pineapple cannery. We shopped around for souviners, and after a couple of hours we stumbled upon a Starbucks so I could finally get my coffee. That crisis averted we headed to the little touristy area where all the shops are. We spent a good portion of the day just "shopping" but not really buying anything. We did stop off at an antique poster store, and found out they owned some actual, original Mucha stuff, but were disapointed to find that they moved the stuff to a second shop the day before for an art show. All-in-all it was a pretty fun little journey.

For lunch we went to a place called the pineapple grill, which is a 4 star resturant. I got a blackened mahi-mahi sandwhich and some crispy duck springrolls, and molly got the kobe beef on a stick with peanut sauce and crabcakes. For desert we shared a pinapple upside-down cake covered in macademia nut icecream and coconut. It was awesome. We came home (this is at like 3 pm) and took a nap.

We got up at 6:30, and watched some TV... eventually I grilled up a couple of pieces of marlin, and we ate that and went to bed.

A vacation from our vacation.

Hawai'i - Day 3

I'm blogging this a day late because we were so exhausted last night that we didn't quite have the energy to do anything more than climb into bed.

Since we missed the Sunrise coming up over the volcano when we did the Sunrise tour on Sunday, we decided to go back on Monday and see the thing that I was told NOT TO MISS. So we got up, again, at 3 AM, ate some breakfast and headed to the middle of the island. It took a long time. And we passed the spot where we had started our bike ride the day before, and KEPT DRIVING FOR ANOTHER HALF HOUR! At the bottom of the mountain we noticed that we only had a quarter tank of gas in our Chevy Aveo (tiny, compact car.) We knew that if we turned around to get gas we were going to miss the sunrise... so we went for it. By the time we finally made it to the top, the car was on empty.

We got into the trunk to get the camera and jackets (its cooooold up there), and I remembered that I had left the memory card for the camera in the computer when I had blogged the day before. Molly and I had an agreement that we were to remind each other to get that memory stick back into the computer after the blogging was completed, and we had both dropped the ball. Sunrise at 6:19 and it was 5:50. No way we could make it to the bottom and back up again before the sunrise, so we gave up on the notion of taking pictures that day and went to watch the sun come up.

It was pretty remarkable. You're standing, quite literally, at the top of a huge cliff, overlooking the "caldera" (giant volcano hole), that has been worn down over years of erosion. The hole itself is giant... more like a canyon. There are several hikes that go down into it, and one of the hikes takes 3 days. As you're looking across this "canyon" you see the tops of the clouds so thick that you can't see anything but the black lava rock, the sky and clouds. Then slowly you begin to watch the clouds collapse upon themselves as the sun begins to rise behind them. When the sun finally breaks over the tops of the clouds, it fills the canyon with light and you realize that the black rock below is actually black, brown, green, grey and many shades of redish orange. One person described the canyon as mordor (from the lord of the rings) and that actually is a pretty decent description... you could almost see an army of Orcs running around down there.

Right after the sun came up, at 6:30, the visitor's center opened up and we scrambled in and bought a disposable camera... only $8.50! What a deal for a monopoly... of course how many people forget to bring a working camera to watch that?

There were a couple of hikes around in that area, so we climbed up a little 500 ft summit to get an even better view of the valley below, then went back to the car to figure out what we were going to do next. We located a trail map and found one that was about 2.6 miles down into the canyon a little bit. No problem.

However, 1. we were not wearing shorts. 2. we failed to bring more than a half liter of water. Soooooo stupid of us. Regardless we started down the trail, noticing how much warmer it was starting to get... but realizing that there wasn't much we could do about it now that we were a mile in. And Molly... being her father's daughter, and me, being invincable, decided to continue down. Right about the point when we decided that we should turn around, we looked down into the valley a little bit and could just faintly make out a trail that went up to, and around, one of the many smaller volcano cones down in this canyon. I looked at our trail map and found that this was actually the trail that we had intended upon taking, but hadn't realized that it's climax was so amazing. We outweiged our options: We had not drank any more than two sips of our water so far, and we weren't yet exhausted... so we decided to continue on down.

The trail, of course, got much steeper after this point, and sandier... making the trek much more difficult. Molly kept on second-guessing the trail as we continued, but I, cleverly kept playing the devils advocate, saying that we should just go a few more yards to "point x" or "point y" to see what the rest of the trail looks like (she knew I was doing it, but she wanted me to, as well). Finally we got to the last stretch of the trail, and looked back and saw that the final 1000 feet down was only 2 switchbacks... leaving a very difficult climb for us on the way back up. Regardless we pressed on, because we could easily see the calderas calling to us.

From the website, we did the difficult half-day hike (ka lu'u o ka oo):

Keoneheehee Trail (also called Sliding Sands Trail)
This extremely strenuous trail descends 2,800 feet (853m) in the first 4 miles (6.4km) to the valley floor. For a difficult half-day hike, take the trail to the first cinder cone, Ka Luu o ka Oo to complete a five mile round trip hike. For overnight trips Keoneheehee Trail leads to Kapalaoa cabin in 5.6 miles (9km), or Paliku cabin and campsite in 10.4 miles (16.7km). The Keoneheehee Trail starts at the bulletin board by the entrance to the Haleakala Visitor Center parking lot. On long treks to the central valley or beyond it is recommended that you hike the Halemauu Trail out of the valley due to the steepness and soft cinder base of the Keoneheehee Trail.


I should mention that NOBODY was on this trail except us. We had passed several people on the way down, but hadn't seen them after that. We eventually made it to the volcano hole, and took some amazing pictures. From that point you could see the vistor's center... and it was tiny. We rested for awhile, and decided to start back, before it got any hotter... it was 8:30 AM at this point, and the sun was really starting to get warm. Two other people finally met up with us at the cone, so I can safely say that Molly and I were the first to the cone that day!

Molly was sweating her balls off, wearing jeans, so she decided that she was going to become the "trail tailor" and alter her jeans into some stylish shorts... unfortunately didn't have a knife with us, so every person we passed on the way up she asked to borrow a pocket knife. We eventaully found a couple with one after the first .6 miles of the trip back up. They borrowed our sunscreen.

We took it sloooow, so slow the couple we met at the cone beat us back up, easily. We wanted to conserve what little water we had. But I have to say, the hike up was extremely strenuous. After about an hour and a half we made it back up to the top. We managed to conserve our strenth and water quite well. We polished off another full bottle when we got back to the car. It was a tough 5 miles.

It was now 11 AM. How the heck are we going to get down the mountain without any gas... Well, only one way, in neutral, all the way down. I was white knuckled on the way up, but the way down I thought I was going to be sick. I never drive mountains... so Molly was doing all of the driving. She did an amazing job, having been taught from the master. She really wanted to test the "air-conditioning-slows-down-the-vehicles-decent" theory as professed by Professor Max A May. With the car on E and 28 miles down the mountain and 17 miles back to civilization after that, we had to conserve EVERYTHING... no radio, no air... there were some parts towards the end where we even rolled up windows to get better aerodynamics.

We made it, barely.. the light only turned on twice.

After that, we bought a spare memory card for the camera at Wal-Mart, and headed right back where we were for lunch (17 miles up the mountain).

Next we headed towards the 1 winery on Maui. It was in the middle of nowhere. It was a 45 minutes drive from the lunch resturant. The wine was not great, but they had a couple of decent sparklings... and one of them was sale, so got two bottles and headed back to the hotel. That took about 2 hours to get back to the hotel.

At this point we're exhausted. I drove back, and right at the end, Molly wakes up long enough to ask for icecream... so we stop and get a scoop.

Once we get back to the hotel, we showered, inspected our various sunburns (hardly any... but we know now where to apply the suncreen a little better for next time), and made some pineapple vodka drinks and sat in the bed and watched some episodes of "My name is Earl". At 7pm, I got out of bed and fried up some fresh marlin, which we ate quietly, then turned out the lights. We were immediately asleep.

No pictures from yesterday, just on the disposable camera. Today we're taking a vacation from the vacation... just some tooling around the local city... shopping, eating a nice lunch... swimming, napping, whatever. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures.

Hawai'i - Day 2

So we were/are still a bit jet-lagged, so we did the "Bike down the volcano" tour this morning. We ended up getting up at 3 AM local time, which is 6 AM Pacific. We went to bed early enough yesterday that it was not hard at all to get up early and drive to the tour place. Apparently you save like $45 per person if you don't make them pick you up from your hotel... fine with us; there is NO traffic at 3:30 AM.

We had signed up to see the sun rise up over the volcano, but apparently, due to a recent court ruling, we're not allowed to be up at the top (in the park). Ok... that sucks! What did we pay the $60 per person for? Well, let me tell you. If you look at a Map of Maui, there is a road coming down from the eastern volcano that looks like this: WWWWWWWWWWW...lots of switchbacks. We rode bikes, with a top speed of 33 mph down that. The view was amazing. The ride was incredible. All-in-all we had a great time. Coming down to the tree line you hit a patch of jasmine and you swear that you're in heaven. Plus, perhaps the best part, is Uncle Russ, the tourguide. This 58 year old guy, been a surfer, and a hippie for 40 years. It takes about an hour to get used to the way he talks... you can definately understand every word he says... its perfect english. However he has his own slang that makes it almost impossible to understand WTF he is saying. As the day progresses, you begin to understand his madness (is that a good thing?) and his hippie-biker-surfer-ish starts to make sense. I can tell you that us Ring-a-dingers put our poptops on to protect our coconuts so we could letter out and really ring-a-ding down, man.

After that we decided to go to the Western volcano/peak. There is a state park in the valley carved out from the water through caldera. It is the spot that receives more rainfall than any place in the US: 400 inches per year, so, of course, its a rain forest. Compare that to 20 miles away which is a vast desert. The part itself was disapointing because we were wanting to get some hikes in, and there were no hikes to take. Just a little mile paved loop throug some gardens. The pictures and the scenery were amazing, though.

After that we decided to go to the one winery on the island. We ended up getting lost and frustrated and not going. But we found out later that its closed on easter. We ate a little deli sandwich on a beach on the south shore between the two volcanos, and then headed back to our hotel... at about 2:30.

We did stop at a local fruit stand, and got raped on prices compared to the supermarket. But just before that we saw some whales flipping around in the water off shore. It was pretty neat.

When we got back to the hotel we put on our swimwear and headed to the beach were we swam and sat out for a little over an hour, then headed back to the hotel were we ate cheese, drank wine and took pictures of the local wildlife.

At sunset we walked 30 feet from our hotel room to catch the sun disapear behind some clouds while whales flipped up out of the water in the foreground. One of the most amazing things I've seen.

Enjoy the pictures... we're exhasuted and going to head to bed right now to try to get up early to CATCH the sunrise on the volcano tomorrow.

The Pictures:

Hawaii - Day 2

Hawai'i - Day 1

We arrived safely in Maui today, 12:30PM local time, about 3:30 Pacific, 5:30 central. We got up at 6:00 AM to ride the train to the airport to catch the 10 AM flight. It's now 6:08 pm and we're exhausted!

It is sooo beautiful here. Words cannot describe! It is a little warm during the day, it was 82 degrees when we landed, and humid.

We have a little Chevy Aveo to get us around, and our first stop was K-Mart to buy molly a Lei and a cooler. The second stop was Costco to buy wine, bread, cheese and fresh fish. We're hoping to save money buy eating lunch at the nice resturants, but cooking dinner at the hotel. Tonight? Lightly fried Marlin, pasta parmesian and goat cheese with a cheap pinot grigio. Yum!

Our hotel room has an ocean view, and is 50ft from a nice little beach and great snorkeling. We immediately got our bathing suits on and enjoyed about 45 minutes of the warm clear-blue water, then back to the hotel for wine and dinner.

Tomorrow we are driving into town to get hauled up to the top of the volcano to watch the sunrise over the ocean, and then bike down 38 miles. I'm told by MANY people that this is THE thing to do in Maui. So we're going to bed right now to get up at 3 AM. SOOOO tired.

Enjoy the pictures from our hotel room!

Maui - Day 1

Off to Hawaii

Molly and I are very excited about our upcoming trip. Molly just claimed that it was her first new place since our honeymoon in 2002. It's not totally accurate because we did go to South America in 2004.

So we leave tomorrow at 10 AM on Hawaiian Airlines. The flight is about 5 and a half hours long, direct from Portland. We're going to Maui for the full week (8 days, 7 nights). All in all we'll have about 6 and a half days of vacation. Not too bad, but I know it will feel too short.

For half of the week we're doing the West half of the island; mostly hitting the beach, and whatever else we can imagine up (bike ride down the volcano, snorkeling). The second half of the trip will be spend on the east side of the island. We have a little B&B there with a private "cabana" and hot-tub with views of the ocean. Its not too far from the entrance to the state park, so we're planning on doing some good hiking at least 1 of the days... more likely 2 days.

I'll take lots and lots of pictures and try to update the blog every day, but I can't promise anything, because I don't know about the internet situation.

Aloha!

Check out my Kegs!

I described the setup last time, but 2 pictures are worth 2000 words (which is why TV is more popular than books).

I also poured my first kegged homebrew last night, and it was very yummy. Thank you, Chad, for the recipe... I recommend that you make this beer again, because it is "all that and a bag of chips".

My next beer will be my Brown Ale, which I'm going to officially name "Nut-up Brown". I'll have to buy another 30 bucks worth of equipment to get another Keg and tubes/clamps, etc to tie into the gas. If I have time, and it looks like I might, I will try to make it this coming week, so it will be ready to keg when I get back from Hawaii. Yeah!

Kegging Equipment

Max May Update

Molly went up to Minnesota this last weekend (we're finnally getting around to uploading the photos).

Max is having a hard time, but keeping his spirits up, and still likes hearing from everyone.

Max on the Bike

Ah, the Kegging has begun

So with these insane amount of hours that I have been putting in, what do I do when I get a free afternoon? I buy a few hundred bucks worth of kegging equipment, so I can finally get the Cider (which molly has dubbed: "Slippin' Cider") and the Chzadech - take 2 out of the carboys.

The cider has really been in the carboy since October. I tasted it today, it has definately mellowed out QUITE nicely. I was actually just about to kill the yeast, when I remembered, my kegs are 5 gallon, and I have just under 6 gallons of cider there. I'm not wasting cider, and I don't want a flat cider, so I'll have to siphon of about a gallon into a second container, add a little bit of priming sugar to that, then bottle that near gallon into some champagne bottles we've been holding onto that happen to fit a beer capper.

The Chzadech - take 2 is the second hash of mine at making a beer that Chad (Morley) designed over a year ago. The first run of it, for whatever reason, just didn't turn out. The beer took 2-3 months to clear up in the bottles, and even then didn't taste quite right. It was drinkable, not terrible, but not what he had intended. (He has since made some very tasty beers, no thanks to me). This is more of a matter of pride, and curiosity that I've made this beer again. I wanted to see if it really was something strange with the recipe (which I've always doubted) or if I really screwed something up (which I've suspected). We'll, I tasted it today before I kegged it... yummy. It is going to turn out to be one of the better beers that I've made.

The kegging equipment that I have is quite simple. I have a very small (18" tall) cylinder of liquid CO2. I have a 60PSI, dual gauge regulator with a shut off valve. Coming off of the regulator I have about 4 inches of plastic tube that joins a plastic T-joint to split into 2 plastic tubes, each of which ends with a female connector for the soda keg. I have 2 5 gallon soda kegs right now. I bought a 7.2 cubic foot chest freezer at the Home Depot, which happened to fit into the back of my Malibu (yes, it's that small). The chest freezer fits exactly 4 soda kegs on the "floor" of the freezer, then there is a shelf on the side where, presumably, the compressor sits underneath, and my CO2 tank fits perfectly on top of. I don't have the camera right now, otherwise I'd upload a picture. For "taps", I just have the very simple ones that are reminiscent of the college keg parties. It will work for now, no real cash involved, and they're easy to clean.

So the bohemian pilsner is kegged and is being carbonated as I write this. It will be ready to drink as early as thursday, 7:30pm, but will be perfectly aged next Tuesday (a week from today). I'm told that a week in a keg is like a month in a bottle as far as readiness. And that's good... I drank my last homebrew yesterday.

Speaking of Homebrew, I've got a beer buddy. Josh Yoder, who moved up here with Molly and I from Madison, WI, is turning into quite the little beer maker. He's made two since I've made the Chzadech. I've "helped" him with both, but the first one, damn it, became a case of the exploding bottles. It's a shame that it happened to him, because its not happened to me (yet). The beer was a Belgium Wit beer, kind of a clone of New Belgium's Mothership Wit. What we drank of it was very, very good. It had a funky smell to it, probably from the coriander, but very tasty. The second beer, that we made on Sunday was a Dubbel. I've been wanting to make one for a long time, and he just decided that it was the one he was doing next... so he beat me to it, darn it! He has already decided he's going to make his the wit beer again, so I'm looking forward to that.

Molly's getting back from Minnesota tonight, late. And I still have about 45 minutes of Wal-Mart work to get done.

Have I mentioned that I cannot wait until Hawaii?

Worthless A**hole

It sometimes sickens me to live in this country.

Bush veto's anti-torture bill

Sunday Hike near Mt. St. Helens

So these pictures were taken while we were on a hike in the Gifford Pinchot (sp?) national forest in Washington. From certain spots your supposed to be able to see Mt. St. Helens, although we couldn't quite see it from our hike. The hike we intended to take was supposed to be amazing, but it was too snowy for my car to get up the trail, so we had to find an easier path. I don't know what that other hike would have been like, however if it was half as spectacular as this, then I can't wait for the path to be cleared enough to hike it.

Enjoy the pictures!

Gifford Pinchot National Forest