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.

Christmas Party and Turtles

We had Lindsey's Christmas part this weekend and it also snowed up on Mauna Kea! We were able to see the snow yesterday, but it was cloudy today, so no pictures were possible. Looks like it might be a white Christmas afterall.

Sally listed off a bunch of questions in her in response to our last post. Thanks for all the questions Sally, we'll try our best with them from what we know.
1) What kind of bugs? Well, the scariest bug of them all (which both of us have yet to see) if this huge centipede that can sting you. It gets about 8 inches long. If you just Google: Hawaii Centipede and look at the images, it should pop up. Scary! We also have scorpions in the drier areas, these really big black bees, huge snails, and a lot of normal things, the most disappointing of which are mosquitoes (but they're not bad at all near the coast).
2) Weeds in the backyard? The only plant that I really know in the photo beside the palms are the reddish and green, really thin plants that are in the center of the photo, near the stairs. Those are native to Hawaii and are Ti plants. Traditionally, they always put these around homes to protect them.

Lindsey running around with some of the staff's kids.


The Christmas party was at the Hilo Yacht Club, great location, but confoundingly...not a yacht in site.


Just today we went snorkeling at a new beach near our house and all these turtles were just hanging out.


Some of the people were feeding them grass, which we learned later upsets their stomachs. They typically love to eat the limu (seaweed) off of the rocks. But with all that grass, they must just get excited and eat it anyway.


It was so nice and sandy all along the bottom. The water was pretty cold, but it felt really nice.


Turtle eating some grass.

New Apartment and Hawaiian Christmas Tree

While no one has exhibited much sympathy for the fact that there is no snow here, avocados are always in season, and its always 80 during the day with no humidity, it will be hard to adjust to the rhythm of the almost imperceptible seasons. So, while there are lights up, Christmas displays in stores, and the second advent candle is lit, it feels like the same summer month keeps repeating. It's basically the Hawaiian sequel to Groundhog's Day. The weather is great, but it is strange when time is passing, but there is not way to tell that it is. I know, boo-hoo.

Well, the one fun thing is that we just moved out of our basement apartment this last weekend! We were both so happy to get out of the cave we have been living in for the last three months. The new place is a small one bedroom, but it's just perfect. It's really cozy and we didn't need to buy a lot of furniture because there was a built in kitchen table with benches, and the previous tenants sold us some of their furnishings.


Here's the view from the front door, looking through the kitchen into the dining/living room.


We have a small loft in the bedroom, which is super good surfboard storage.


This is the view of our backyard.


Here is our little bedroom, the only real piece of furniture that we had to buy was this bed.


Here's our cute Hawaiian Christmas tree! Our old landlord cut this tree down at her house, so I kept it in a bucket for a few days and then I trimmed it down to apartment size. The locals like to have "mainland" trees, but this one is really cool.


We didn't have any ornaments, so we made little ones from sea glass that we collected awhile back.

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.