Weekend Adventures and Thanksgiving

This week we had Thanksgiving at Lindsey's work and it was great. We have spent a lot of our Thanksgivings away from family over the past couple of years, but we've managed to make most of them have been very special and different. This year, we went out to the farm where Lindsey works two days of the week. All of the kids in the program made a big meal at each of the three camps. It was so nice to be able to see the beautiful setting that Lindsey gets to call her second office. Typically, it's closed off to non-staff, but I was able to check it all out on T-day. So, we ended up having a meal with about 12 of the kids, some staff, and the owner of the program. About 20 of us ate the huge meal sitting at one enormous, round picnic table in the middle of a forested farm, it was really nice.

We headed up the Hamakua Coast this weekend just to see some sights that we haven't explored yet. Another fab trip.


Here's one of our new favorite meals: turkey burgers with goat cheese, beets, and purple sweet potatoes...mmmm.


Surf beach, we just went this last weekend.


Here's a shot of Mauna Kea behind downtown Hilo.

Thanksgiving

Lindsey drives an hour and a half each way to work two times a week, but what a drive. We have a couple of shots of the route down here and then us at the camp.

When you get to about 2000' feet of elevation (after starting at sea level) it's almost always raining, but your pretty sure that it will stop when you get to about 4000'.

Then, you drive through the National Park, which is mostly desert on the drive, but is just gorgeous.

There are a ton of macadamia nut orchards on the way.

Here are some eucalyptus trees.




(Lindsey's turn) This is where I work....and this is the view the kids have from the first farm/camp. This place is called Nalu, which means Wave in Hawaiian and the focus of this camp is on reflection and self-care (finishing your 3 organic meals a day and drinking 3 Nalgene's of water). The little houses are a students hale, where they are protected from the elements.

This is the last farm: called the Ohana, which means family in Hawaiian. It is our oldest and biggest farm. The second farm is called Kuleana, which means personal-responsibility.


This is where I lead group therapy sessions with the kids!


This is the nursery.

Plants kiddos are planting in the nursery.


The kids decorated for Thanksgiving!



This is a Hawaiian Imu. The kids dug a huge hole, started a fire, layered wood/rocks, and put in the ham/turkey for 5 hours. They covered it with banana leaves and stalks, and a burlap sack, and wet the burlap. It was delicious!!!
This is Bri and I's drive north of Hilo. A huge tsunami hit this area in the 40's.


Bamboo forest at Akaka Falls.


Bri and I spotted 4 wild pigs in the woods as we were walking on the path at the falls! I said we better watch out for mama! Huntint wild pigs is a sport here.


Hamakua Coast.


Akaka Falls.

This is about 7 miles from our house!

A pretty flower Brian spied.

Hawaii Volcano National Park

If you look close, you can see one of the roosters and a chicken in our front yard. There are a ton of these guys running around the neighborhood.


Just this past week, Hilo hosted Black and White night, which is an event to support the downtown business community. Hilo usually shuts down pretty early most nights, so it was fun to walk through the local businesses and see some music.

It's a Nene! These are an endangered species here in Hawaii and some of them live in the yard of the couple I've been working for. Lindsey just read that they are all descended from one pair of Canadian Geese, pretty cool. I wanted to dress up as one for Halloween...maybe next year.

Volcano National Park

So, this weekend, my patience finally paid off and we went camping in Volcano National Park. We stayed near the park entrance Friday night and went out for dinner in Volcano (the town). It was so nice because the weather is really cool at the higher elevations, it actually feels like fall. Then on Saturday morning, we packed up and started on a 7-mile hike to Napau Crater Campsite, one of the trails in the parks back-country. The weather was sunny with cool breezes with a little misting rain on the way out Saturday. We were the only ones camping at the spot and saw only two other groups in two days. The campsite sits right near one of the most active craters, which is fueling all of the lava entries near the ocean. We hiked past old craters, across lava, and through a little rainforest. I can't wait to go back.

Brrr!!! It got down to about 45-50 this first night and we were freezing! It's a shock to the system after living in 80 degree weather all the time. I can see all the tears your shedding for us.


The trail crossed miles of vast lava fields, the scale of them is just impossible to portray.


The trail we went on was closed past the campground we stayed at because of huge earth cracks and what-not.


The lava flows from the 60's and 70's have some plant life starting to take root out in the open. A lot of the first species are native plants.

I just love all of the textures of the lava flows. They constantly change color and shape, because of the gas and mineral content of the lava, as well as newer flows covering older. It's just this constantly changing, dynamic landscape.


This here is a lava tree, albeit, not a very good example. When the lava started flowing into this one time forest, it hardened around a tree that stood here and made this cast.


The trail is denoted by these piles of rocks, or cairns, along the open lava fields.


Here is a native fern frond starting to spool out.


After the miles of lava, we entered a rain forest for the last 2 miles of the hike.

This crater was huge, and it was still steaming from the sides.


Some of the steam vents along the trail. In a lot of places, there is still active lava flowing underneath the ground.

Binzer taping up some blisters along the way.


The money shot. This is Pu'u'O'o, the most active crater in the park right now. I could just sit and watch this thing for hours. No worries, most Hawaiian volcano's are not of the violently erupting variety (ex. Vesuvius). Some of these craters have put up 1000ft lava fountains and created lava lakes and rivers, but they aren't building up explosive pressure.


We went and scoped out some campsites as we were leaving the park, and this Nene started coming after me. I'm guessing he was looking for food (which we did not give him). He walked right up to me and started making this pathetic honking sound. I thought he was going to try and jump in the car to go for a spin with us, which, I kind of wish had happened.

Happy Halloween

For Halloween this year, we played our usual hand and panicked on the day of, running around to piece outfits together. I decided to be Harry Potter based on a $30 owl I found and the fact that we watched every movie in preparation for the the next film. Lindsey was going to be a British telephone booth aka, the Ministry of Magic elevator, but settled on a pokemon chicken outfit, which we thought at the time of purchase was just a regular chicken outfit.

Not much news. We are both anxiously awaiting the move into our new apartment, which will happen at the start of December. It will be less basement-esque, which is nice. I've also been doing some work independently, building a website for some children's authors and also doing some GIS/aerial imagery work.

I went up in a small plane the other day to take some pictures and just get a knack for the flying thing (I could do some work flying the Hawaiian islands taking aerial imagery). We happened to fly over the resort we had stayed at the other week in Kona.

Stephen is the guy I've been working with and he happened to get behind the controls for a bit during the flight, I was more comfortable when he was driving the car.

Shot for Paul. I had no idea what any of the planes were, but I knew he would have gotten a kick out of hanging out at the Kona airport.

Double Rainbow!!! Oh my god! (If you haven't seen the YouTube video, just google Double Rainbow) Right near Volcano National Park


We camped again at the spot where we lived for a bit when we first moved here.


Harry caught without his wand as some demon creature attempts to eat Headwig

We went and watched The Great Pumpkin and hung out with some kids on Halloween, it was fun.

Lindsey getting some paint on Mike's face (which he later had an allergic reaction to) for the party we went to on Saturday night.

The outfits.