The Hike from Hell

We spent last weekend hiking into a remote beach in Volcano National Park to stay Saturday night. The park has some gorgeous back-country locations where you can camp. The one we chose, Halape Beach, was 11-miles along the rugged lava coastline. When we started out, spirits were high. It's pretty hot and slow going across the open lava plains, but the view of the ocean was great. It's really neat to watch the waves crash into the shore and send plums of water into the air. After about two miles, my knee started to hurt, and then both knees did. When we got to the six mile mark, I finally decided to tell Lindsey that I wasn't doing so good. But, rather than trudge back 6 miles to the car, I chose to continue going the five miles to the beach. Let's just say the trip back out the next day was a death march. We both didn't know if we would make it out before nightfall, we switched packs with two miles to go, and I could barely walk the last two miles...but then we got home and I ate a huge bowl of ice cream, all better.


The whole hike is mostly along the shore and you continue to cross various lava fields.


Here's a picture of some newer lava on some of the older stuff. It's clear to see along the cliffs in the background as well.


The beach itself was really nice. Nothing too incredible, but nice. The best part was this small brackish pool that was hidden in an earth crack, the water was really warm and so clear. It didn't help that I reminded Lindsey about two hours into our hike that we could have been sitting on any number of the world's most beautiful beaches at about this time, if we had just driven to Kona.


Here's a shot across the beach front. It was a really nice spot and we should have planned better to stay an extra day. There were a bunch of locals staying here that come down every year. They each carry down a whole case of beer and spend their three days drinking and fishing.


I was pumped to round up some coconuts and use the machete that I had hauled in.


This is the small brackish pool that we swam in.


Lindsey having some of the coconut milk from the front door step of our campsite. Back in the 1970's some Boy Scouts stayed at this same beach and a tsunami came up and washed them up and into the same earth crevice that the swimming hole was in, which saved them. No tsunami on this trip!

Another shot of the beach.


This was some huge fish, I should have taken a better picture of the head.

Happy New Year Brudda!

Happy Holidays everybody! Well, Christmas and New Years have already slid by and it's still sunny and 80 everyday...brrr... Personally, I can't wait until it warms back up to 85 everyday come March.

So, we haven't posted much in a while, but I'll just let the pictures do the talking with some narration to show you some of the stuff that we're up to.

So, we drove to see the fresh lava twice during the past week. The first time, we brought hiking shoes and lights, and then we were only allowed to walk within about 400 meters of it...a little dissapointing. But, this last trip we made was a lot better. While we didn't bring the lights and wore flip-flops, we were allowed to get within about 20 feet of the fresh lava, it was pretty cool.

Here are all the people looking at the lava from the viewing area on the first trip we made. We were both bummed we couldn't get any closer...but at least we only had to drive 30 minutes to get home and then try on a different day.


On New Year's Day we hiked to Shipman's Beach, which is this isolated little beach on the eastern side of the island and it was awesome. It took about 45 minutes to hike to along the coast through some really incredible forest along an old Hawaiian road. The beach is right in front of this amazing house that is still owned by the Shipman family (old money). They have fought to make it a private beach, but all the beaches in Hawaii are public...haha.


Woohoo!

Here we are at the fresh lava area. A house was burned down about a month ago out here, where people built on land that was freshly covered with lava only about 10 years ago...next to the world's most constantly active volcano...kinda makes it hard to really feel bad for them.


A few weeks ago we went to this show and silent auction for a fundraiser for BJ Penn's charity, an Ultimate Fighter that lives on our block. It was quite a cultural experience. The comedian opened with a range of Portuguese and Filipino jokes...didn't really expect that. Then we were regaled with the musical stylings of Melveen Leed, the first Hawaiian to perform at the Grand Ole Opry (which she made sure to inform of us in the first minutes of her performance). She spent most of the time harassing the DJ (a kid with an Ipod in the back of the room) to skip through songs and yell the titles to her because she couldn't recognize the tunes.


Christmas Day we went over to our friend Hillary and Steven's house. It was really nice to get together and have a little potluck and play some music! I got a little carried away with the blue outfit though.


This was our first attempt at making Finish Tarts and they turned out really well...mmm. Thanks for sending the cutout Becky!

Binzer made me add this one in the revision stage. "That's not normal!" she said. I guess I just forget that everyone else isn't surrounded by huge Asian bells and bamboo forests.