Happy 4th of July!

Never thought we'd be celebrating Independence Day in Hawaii, but here we are. So, how does someone in Hawai'i mark the holiday? I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count. By going to the beach, of course!

Steve & Josh started the day by trying to tour a coffee place. Since it was the 4th, the coffee place was closed (so everyone could go to the beach, of course!), so they ended up stopping to drink coffee and then bringing home doughnuts for all of us. Yum!

Josh & Caroline prepped to go home, while we decided to visit a beach that Steve & I remembered from our visit here in 2001 (so we thought). Makalawena is a secluded beach that's only accessible by a rough 4WD road or by walking about a mile from another beach area. After bumping down that road, we were there. But, it turned out this wasn't the beach we had been to before (unless it had changed quite a bit since then -- possible, I guess). It was still an awesome beach, with only about 30 people on it, pretty amazing considering the day.


We saw three sea turtles, quite close up, while the boys were playing in a tidal pool area at one edge of the beach. We also could see schools of tiny fish swimming, and a few larger fish the boys recognized from their snorkeling time. (And I got to see them too, since the water was so clear.)


After we left the beach and bumped our way back up the road, we headed home to grill burgers and wait for my mom's plane to arrive and the fireworks to start. Evelyn (my mom) got here about 7:30, and fireworks started at 8. We were lucky enough to be able to see them from the yard of our house. I'd never seen fireworks from above before, so this was kind of cool. (Way too short, though, only about 15 minutes long.)

Little Bit of Shakin' Goin' On

Steve and I felt an earthquake today, around 12:30. I thought it was just the couch wiggling like it does when the washer is doing the spin cycle, but then I realized the washer wasn't on. Plus, an artsy thing hanging on the wall rattled a bit.

Later, I looked on the USGS Recent Earthquakes page and found that there actually was a decent-sized earthquake (3.2) at that time, near Hilo.

Kind of cool.

The rest of today has been pretty relaxed. Steve worked this morning, while the boys and I shopped a little and hit the library for a new stash of books and videos. By the way, if there is something you want me to bring back for you from Hawai'i, you need to be making your requests soon. We have to leave this paradise in 8 days.

Tonight we are headed to dinner with the Turpens. Not sure where we're going yet, but I'm sure it will be good.

The Turpens leave tomorrow night, about the same time that Evelyn (my mom) arrives. Plus, it will be fireworks night! Yippee! I hope to be able to see them from the deck at the house.

My pics today are from earlier in our trip. The top one was taken by David and overlooks the snorkeling beach that the boys love. The second one is a shot of the boys during their dolphin class.

Return of the Snorkeling Fools

The boys got to snorkel again today, this time with Steve, Josh & Caroline. (I chose to sit in the shade and read a book. Amazingly, I am reading a great deal less on this trip than I normally do at home.)


They took our underwater camera (from Walmart) with them today, so hopefully we'll have some nice fish pics to add to the blog at some point. Apparently they saw a lot of cool ones today.

From where I was sitting, I was able to see a big sea turtle that decided to waddle ashore for awhile. Honestly, it looked like he had his head stuck in the sand to tune out all the people who were oohing and aahing over him!

After snorkeling, warming up, eating lunch and snorkeling some more, the boys & I shared a ginormous Shave Ice--with strawberry, banana and grape flavoring. It looked so good that we forgot to take a pic first! Sorry.


We grilled steaks at home tonight with the Turpens and then enjoyed another beautiful sunset. We leave for home in just over a week. It's going to be hard to leave all of the wonderful sites we're encountering here.

p.s. Lava started flowing again today at the Pu'u O'o vent! Check out the details here.

Volcanoes, Here We Come

Today we decided to visit Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, even though the current lava flow has been paused since a series of earthquakes on Father's Day. Josh & Caroline made the drive down with us, before going their own way (and ending up on the northeast part of the island before the day was through).

Seeing the various craters was cool, despite the sporadic spitting rain that accompanied our day. Plus, the boys did the requirements to receive Junior Ranger badges (various activities at locations throughout the park), their second badges since we arrived. (The first were at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park within a few days of our arrival.)

So, since I think I finally got the whole hierarchy of the volcano park figured out, I thought I'd share it with you. Kiluea is a volcano on the island of Hawai'i and is located on the southeastern part of the island. (Mauna Loa is another volcano, but is not currently active.) The Kiluea caldera (the area formed after the collapse of land after a volcanic eruption) is like one giant crater that has other craters inside of it. The biggest of those is called Halema'uma'u:



Other craters include Keanakako'i and Kiluea Iki (or "little Kiluea").


To be honest, Volcanoes is a place I'd like to hike and explore more -- without my kids. They have just enough patience to handle the Crater Rim Drive and maybe a 1/2 mile hike somewhere. But, that's probably not meant to be on this trip.

On our way to Volcanoes, we drove past some awesome Whittington Park, an old pier that made for some great landscape shots, including the one at the top of this post.

After finishing at Volcanoes, we grabbed some dinner out and caught the sunset at home with the Turpens.

Snorkeling Fools

My kids love to snorkel.

I don't know why this should surprise me, as so far they have loved boogie boarding, swimming in the ocean, splashing in the waves, and basically the beach in general. (However, they are not fans of visiting rocky beach areas where you just watch the waves crash into the shore. "Boring," D says.)

As you might guess, we went snorkeling this morning. I've been hesitant to do this, since I still worry a bit about the boys drifting away, drowning, etc. (All part of being a mom, I think. Perhaps I need a t-shirt: "I'm a mom, therefore I worry.") I also worried about my own skills in the water, which is probably the bigger part of my neurosis.

So, as I said, my kids had a great time. Both of them float like it's nothing, propel themselves all over the bay to look at various fish, and handle the snorkel mask and tube with no problems. Steve took a couple of tries to get the hang of it, but he's doing pretty well too. And me? Well, let's just say I'm destined to view other people's pictures of all the pretty fish they saw on their snorkeling and diving trips.

It's not that I'm bad at snorkeling. It's more that I can't seem to get started. Putting my face in the water, quite simply, freaks me out. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I can't wear my glasses when I try snorkeling, so I feel really disoriented from the start (like, walking into the water from the shore). But, it's not all about me, so right now I am happy that my kids have found another thing that they love.

After snorkeling today, we had lunch again at Quinn's Almost-by-the-Sea, which serves the best ono and chips in the world. Then, we randomly stopped to watch some surfers take on some monster waves (and one woman with fake boobs frolicking in the surf) along Ali'i Drive.

The rest of this afternoon is being spent relaxing (read: Steve's taking a nap!) while we anticipate the arrival of the Turpens. (Their flight gets in late tonight.) Tomorrow we are planning to visit Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park.

Wow, the sky is clear up here!

We made it to the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station without incident. (Well, the Jeep apparently tried to overheat a bit on our way up the access road, but since I didn't notice until after we'd stopped, I'm not counting that!)

On our way up, the sun was starting to set. Talk about beautiful (and a bit blinding, since the air was so clear). Of course, I was driving and there really weren't any pullouts, so you're going to have to take my word for it. (Or come here yourself to see it, which I highly recommend!)

The staff at the center was certainly ready for us (and all the other folks who came up tonight): they had 3 very large telescopes ready to show us the celestial sights--Venus, Saturn (complete with rings - wow!) and Jupiter with several moons. The best part was that we basically had the place to ourselves for at least 20 minutes, so the staff and volunteers were very willing to explain lots of stuff to the boys, who ate up all the attention. (One guy asked me if I homeschooled, when I was asking M what he knew about Venus and he was rattling off about 20 facts. I had to explain that, no, he just liked space.) They also had smaller telescopes that you could aim yourself.

Last night was an almost full moon, which apparently cut down on the number of stars we could see. So, we only saw about 20 constellations during the laser-pointer enhanced star tour.

I had worried a bit about how we might handle the 9,200-foot altitude after being in Hawaii for a couple of weeks (high point previously on the trip--about 2,500 feet), but everyone did great. And the crisp 59-degree weather was a nice break from 85 and humid. (Not that I am complaining, as I hear it's topping 100 regularly in Colorado right now. I just enjoy not sweating sometimes.)

David loved the idea that we were above an entire layer of clouds as we watched the moonrise. He thought it was ocean he was seeing from the patio area:

Another high point (and another thing I couldn't get on film, despite trying several times) was the moonbow we saw on our way down. It seemed to only have about 3 different shades of light, but it was very cool. There also was a corona around the nearly full moon, which I am learning (from my Google search for a similar moonbow picture to show you) may be called a moondog. Again, my camera hardly does it justice, but here it is:

Looking to the Skies

Well, the Lopers (Steve's parents, that is) have been dropped at the airport and should be well on their way home by now. Team Klida should be getting on their plane shortly, and we are getting ready to head up to the Visitor Information Station on Mauna Kea, the 13,796-foot high mountain where several world-class observatories are located. We can't go all the way to the summit because the boys are too young to deal with the altitude, but we will be at about 9,200 feet. It will be interesting to see how our bodies deal with that altitude, since the highest we've been in the past two weeks is about 2,500 feet.

At the visitor center, we will be able to check out the nighttime skies using one of their telescopes. If the weather is clear, the viewing tonight should be awesome. I don't know what kind of pictures I'll manage to get from this, but I am looking forward to it. I really think that M will enjoy it, as he has been interested in space since he was about 4 years old.

On a completely different topic, have I talked about the geckos here? Apparently, geckos (yes, like the insurance commercials) are considered good luck and are welcomed into Hawai'ian houses. There are at least a half-dozen geckos that we are sharing space with, ranging from the teeny one that likes to sun itself on the porch steps to the big guy that runs around near the fridge. Since they are cold-blooded, we don't see much of them early morning or late at night, but come afternoon they scrabble everywhere. Today I got some good closeup shots of one guy that decided to explore our table and another that was peeking at me from the kitchen curtain.

Overall, the geckos seem to be pretty harmless. They eat bugs and fruit and are pretty much afraid of people. At night, they click and chatter (sounding a bit like frogs), which is so much better than the rooster that crows whenever he feels the urge (like at 3 a.m.)! Of course, they do poop, so you find little black balls around the house. Erin was freaked out by them for most of her stay, but D loves seeing them.