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Published: June 19th 2010
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There are green sand beaches,
as well as black sand beaches. The ones we visited were white sand with black. The white sand was like talc it was so fine. (Dickinson, ND)
It’s been so long since I’ve blogged that I hardly know where to begin. It’s not that we’ve been idle; it’s not that I don’t have news; it’s just that I have been too busy to write! Since we left Giddings, we’ve spent time in Mankato with Megan’s family, in Dickinson with Jean, in Sidney with family, and friends, in Billings with Lisa and Sara and their families, and friends, and we spent a week in Hawaii! Boy do I have a lot to tell you!
Let’s just go right to Hawaii! We went to Kona (on the big island) with three other couples. (we missed you, Carl & Patti) It’s the first time four of us had been there, and we were excited to see, and the others were excited to show! We landed at 7:30 pm, which we thought would be during the daylight hours, but over there it gets dark~~and I mean DARK~~about 7:00, so it was black when landed. Everyone had told us how ugly that side of the island is, because it’s the lava side, compared to the east shore, which is the rainy, lush side. But the lava side has the great
The water was blue or gray
in relation to the color of the sky. The gray sky came from the vocanic fog (vog) rather than storm clouds. beaches, and most of the tourists! We couldn’t see the terrain that night, but I wasn’t shocked by it, like the appearance. The lava formations are fascinating~~some are small and jagged (or big and jagged) with the appearance of another planet. Also the stones are so sharp looking that it’s almost painful to look at them! These are the stones that are so often used for fences on both sides of the island. Another look the lava has is like asphalt that has been poured out~~there are places where it landed in a heap, and then as it cooled, pieces broke off. The lava is brown and black and green~~pretty varied! And people gather up white rock (not really sure where that comes from) and write words on the dark stone; it’s kind of like a classy type of graffiti! That’s my opinion, and I’m not sure the highway dept shares it!
In contrast to the lava, is the amount of flowers~~the colors and smells and variety. They grow on trees, bushes, individual stems; in cracks, flowerbeds, on the lava, and at the highway intersections! They’re amazing.
While we were there, we took a helicopter ride over the
lava flows, and over one of the active volcanoes. This allowed us to see the different lava flows, as well as see the villages that have been destroyed, or in some cases just isolated, by the lava. We saw one village where a street was there, and then all of a sudden there was a lava flow, and the rest of the houses had been burned up, as well as the trees, and other vegetation. So here are a few houses, there by themselves, with access by trail, or in some cases only by helicopter. Why don’t the people sell their houses and move? Values have dropped (ya’ think?), there’s no one to buy them, and they don’t have the money to throw the house away and start over someplace else. There’s one spot where only one house remains, and that man turned it into a bed and breakfast~~complete with helicopter-only access! For a while there was a trail he could use, but then another lava flow came, and the trail is gone too! We saw where the lava flowed into the ocean; sometimes in huge streams, which just made the island bigger, and sometimes in small streams, which exploded
when they hit the cold ocean water, thereby creating the black sand beaches. The lava activity is reported daily, similar to the weather~~their weather forecasts really don’t take long; 75-85 degrees, with an ocean breeze. And they’re done. They might as well talk about the lava! It wasn’t very active when we were there, although we did see a few spots where it was burning, but not really flowing; more like pooling.
We also went snorkeling, and were treated by the dolphins coming to swim with us! There were at least two pods of them, because one time we only saw one pod, and another time there were two pods close to us. The first time they appeared, I could drop my head and watch them playing underwater, and then lift my head out of the water out of the water and watch them jump out of the water! The second time they came, one group was so close to us that both Bob and I thought we could touch them, but when I reached out to touch one’s tail, he just slowly dropped his tail and rolled to the side so I couldn’t reach him! But they were
They were tucked under a
rock where the waves couldn't reach them, so someone was saving them for something! swimming below us as well as on each side! If I sound thrilled by that experience, it’s only a tiny fraction of how thrilling it was! There was another diver near us, and he said in ten years of diving, this is only the third time he’d had them swim near him. What a gift! With the other fish and the remarkable terrain of the ocean floor, the snorkeling would have been fabulous without the dolphins, but it was enchanting with them!
We’re back in Dickinson now, just waiting for summer. No sign of it yet, but we’re not silly, we know it’ll come eventually! I’m going to post Hawaii photos, but they’ll be a little different this time, as I’ve put captions right on the photos…we’ll see how that works!
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Nancy & Earl
non-member comment
how fun
So good to hear about your virgin trip to Hawaii. It was awsome to see your pictures. Thank you