Dear Family and Friends, Ah....Hawaii....other than the significant temperature difference, we feel a bit as if we have come full circle. We started in Iceland, driving through lava fields and we end in Hawaii, driving through lava fields! When we first started to plan this trip 4 years ago, Ken knew he wanted to include Iceland for its rugged beauty and Kate knew she wanted to end with Hawaii, as a pretty good place for a relaxing transition. After another long travel day from Melbourne, Australia, to Kailua Kona, Hawaii (about 18 hours, door-to-door), we were thrilled to be warm, see [View Full Entry]

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We had been going and going the first 2 full days, so we decided to take it easy on our last full day in the Big Island. The hotel had its own tiny, private beach - our first destination in the morning. After a liberal application of sunscreen (...could the sun in Hawaii be that much worse than El Paso?), we found an area which had some shade and set up camp. Fortunately, there were not a lot of people on the beach, so into the water it was! It was such pleasant ocean that I have had to reform my [View Full Entry]

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Reflecting on this wonderful trip so far, it certainly seems that the 4 days here on the Big Island of Hawaii are flying by! Though Henry has been to Hawaii on many occasions, he has not been to this island. It's my very first trip to any Hawaiian island, so we have wanted to see and do it all! We finally arrived at our hotel, the Fairmont Orchid on the west Kohala coast just north of Kona, at 8:40 on Saturday night. Our day of travel was long, starting with a flight from El Paso to Dallas, then to Maui, then [View Full Entry]

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Last day on HI. I did not really have big plans just sort of chillin out my last day here. I have been here 4 days and had not been swimming yet. I went to a reconstructed ancient hawaiian site that was on the ocean. Pretty neat to learn about their ancient culture. I walked just down the beach and went snorkelling. It is amazing how brightly colored the fish are. The water was very clear and cooler than I was expecting. Did not spend a lot of time in the water, don't want to get burnt first time in the [View Full Entry]

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Thursday was my 35th birthday. I spent it on the island of HI. That is not a bad way to celebrate another year. I spent the morning walking around the town of Kona. Every Oct triathletes from around the world come to Kona to compete in the Kona Ironman. The ironman consists of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and then a 26.2 mile run. The race starts and finishes oceanfront in Kona. It is a nice place to walk around and people watch. My big plans for the day was the Mauna Kea Summit tour. We were taken [View Full Entry]

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VOG what is that? It is volcanic fog. More about that in a bit. What a difference a day makes. I actually feel almost human today. Sleep is a great thing. After breakfast this morning decided to hthe road. I loaded up the Dodge Caliber and headed off to see Volcano National Park. It is only 85-90 miles away but what a drive. Reminds me of some of the highway 194 near Valle Crucis (except up there you can not see the Pacific Ocean). While driving, I saw a sign directing to a black sand beach. That was pretty neat to [View Full Entry]

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Aloha from the Big Island of Hawaii. Day one was an adventure to say the least. An extremely long day of travel. Left Charlotte at about 8 am eastern time. I arrived in kona about 2 hawaiil time. Got my rental car and found my bed and breakfast that i am staying in. The Rainbow Plantation is very ecclectic. Not to bad except the peacocks were pretty loud this morning. Went to bed and died for sleep Tuesday. [View Full Entry]

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Today we were up and out of the house by 8:45 to head over to Chris' house. Once we completed the 3 minute drive over there, we listened to humpback whales greatest hits, the recordings of singing humpback whales that we recorded on the Hilo side. We listened to the different verses and themes of the songs. After that we took the pictures that we took last week on the Hilo side and compared them with pictures from our Alaskan Humpback whale catalog, and also Chris' Hawaii catalog. Saulina and Nia were working on the Hawaii catalog and they found a [View Full Entry]

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Today we were all up and about by 7:45 a.m. and we didn't even need to be up by 9:00 a.m! We left for the shore station around 10 and spend about 2 hours there. At the shore station we did the same thing that we did on Tuesday. We used the theodolite and took the postions of all the vessels and pods of whales in the area. On Tuesday there was a lot of whales and only a couple of vessels. But today was totally the opposite, there was a ton of vessels and not as many whales. We also [View Full Entry]

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Bright and early at 6 a.m., we got up and got ready for our long day. Yin and Chris came over this morning at 6:45 a.m. for some breakfast. The breakfast was from Chadd Paishon. He's a very kind man, who does great wonders. At about 8:30, we met up with Chadd and Richard Kaniho before we headed up to Mauna Kea. The drive up the mountain was about 45 minutes more or less. When we arrived to the Puuhuluhulu Ranch & Farm, we saw 4 horses and lots of cows. We got our planting supplies and headed up on a [View Full Entry]

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