We're back from Hawai'i

It was really not a bad time to go to Hawai'i...it snowed (again) the night before we left so heading off to 80 degree days and 70 degree nights wasn't bad at all.

This was the first time I'd seen the big island, it was the second for Charles. This was a place that required a car...there didn't seem to be any form of viable public transportation so we seemed to spend a lot of time in the car. Just getting to the grocery store was a 5 mile drive.

We stayed at a B&B called Lucky Farm, a coffee plantation on the Kona Coast. It was small and fairly rustic but Johnsie, the innkeeper, is a good cook and her breakfasts (and homegrown coffee) were excellent. Breakfast was always served with a lot of fruit, avocados the size of cannon balls, papaya, passion fruit and something really unusual called jabotacaba. The fruit grows directly on the bark of the tree as you can see in the picture to the left. It has a sweet center and sort of a gingery outer skin and a small seed.

Kona has a fairly large population of wild roosters and a gargantuan population of mosquitos. So between the roosters keeping Charles awake and the bugs draining me of half my blood it wasn't all paradise....but again, 80 degree days and 70 degree nights....it's hard to really complain. I spent most of my time when we were at the B&B tring to domesticate a feral kitten. Cali was the mangiest little cat but the big eyes and wombat ears were quite endearing. By the time I left, she was eating out of my hand and allowing me to (briefly) pick her up.

Kona has to be the churchiest place on the face of the earth. It seems every other establishment along the road is a church. Some of the are a bit more prosperous than the one above . One church we passed by frequently had a sign out front that read: TIME TO PRAY....NOW. I think if they were praying about the economy on Kona they had a lot of praying to do. It's not looking good there.

We couldn't go to Hawai'i without visiting the volcanoes. We first drove up to the rim of the Kiluea caldera and got a lungful of sulpher then headed down to the coast to see the lava hit the water. The plume of steam on the horizon is the lava hitting the water. It's kinda far away.

Unfortunately seeing the lava hit the sea would have been quite a hike over miles of lava fields, and as the sign indicates, the road was closed. (As Charles pointed out, this has to be the most photographed sign on the island).

We went a little way but it was pretty hot and we were unprepared so we didn't go far. Pretty day though.

Keeping with the trend of covering every mile of paved road on the island in our car, we headed out another day over to Hilo to stop in at a botanical garden.

Again, another beautiful day and I got some interesting pictures. I think the one of the orchids will be a future hand-colored shot.

The light filtering through the fern in this waterfall shot was just lovely.

Our last day there we went to a state park, the "place of refuge". This is the place people went to if they had been bad, they were forgiven by the king of the gods or whoever, then they could go out and be bad again. Kind of like confession in the Catholic Church or being "born again" (and again, and again.) I jest...anyway, it was a peaceful spot as a place of refuge should be.

These dudes are ki'i....guardians of the place of refuge.

Other than a few excursions such as this we mostly just read books, went to movies and ate. We did have a little excitement with our first rental car. After leaving a window cracked during a rain storm, the door locks on the car started to freak out. It was like the car was possessed or something...door locks flying up and down, clicking noises coming out of the front control panel. Leave it to GM to design a car door that can't withstand a few drops of water. Yeesh. At least we got an upgrade on our second car.

So that's what we did on our only vacation this year. I just thought I should share.