Seattle part II

Here are the rest of the pictures from our Seattle trip, taken at Pike Place Market.  Click here for all the pictures.

Seattle part I

Julie and I spent last Sunday/Monday down in Seattle; first at a concert, (the Seattle Baroque Orchestra), then on Monday, Pike Place Market. This first batch of pictures are shots of the city...coming next, shots of Pike Place.

Click here for all the pictures.

Easter 2009

Fun at the "Lake House" (wish it were ours).  I uploaded a bunch of pictures which can all be seen by clicking here.  I think this first picture of Leon is begging for a caption...

Easter 2009

Happy Easter...but never forget...

"Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD's hand

double for all her sins...

Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.

And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.

For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

New Camera

So, I made the splurge and got a new camera. Here are the first shots from it...(click here for more)

Maui, Day 9, 10 - last post

Day 9 and 10; see all the pictures here.  Our last day and finally, a blue sky with no clouds in sight.  I woke up not knowing whether to laugh or cry...?  I kept telling myself, "at least we have this one day" and we made the most of it!  We took an early morning walk and had a very nice breakfast, and were on the beach by about 9:00.  That would be the theme of the day - BEACH!  In fact, we spent so much time on the beach that my first photo from this day isn't taken until after dinner.

As you might guess, our activities were as follows;
- put on sunscreen
- spread out towels
- lay down

- read a book (yes, even me, Mike spent a lot of the day reading)
- snorkel (see below for our secret)
- more sunscreen
- lay down
- snorkel
- more sunscreen
- eat lunch
- snorkel
- lay down

It was that kind of day and we did NOT want to leave the sun.  Our little snorkel secret?  Well everyone's heard of Black Rock; the famed snorkeling spot a few minutes walk from our hotel.  What we didn't know is that the entire area to the south of black rock also is good snorkeling - you just go out about 100' and swim parallel to the shore, letting the wind carry you.  The bonus?  Nobody was doing it but us so we had that stretch all to ourselves.

We blitzed into Lahaina to grab some Maui Fish Tacos "to-go" and made it back for sunset on the beach.  After dinner, I was concentrating taking some sunset pictures of Black Rock when we heard some people shouting behind us; we both turned and saw a huge whale in full breech, just off the shore.  It turned out that there were a few whales swimming right in front of our beaching putting on a huge show for about 45 minutes, right as the sun was going down...it was magical, and a perfect cap to the day.

Following sunset we walked down to Whalers Village where I enjoyed a scrumptous pineapple dessert of some kind (can't even remember what it was called, but it was good...and rich...like a "sugar bomb").

Our last day, day 10, travel day, we woke up super early to catch the moon-setting - it was a full moon and we were fortunate to see it setting over the water just as the sun was coming up behind us.  Then, on our way to breakfast, I had a blast shooting (with my camera) the beautiful red cardinal that you see here.  Another nice breakfast, a memorable stop for a "sugar cane juice smoothie," and reluctantly, we boarded our plane to head home...to the snow.

One last note: on the flight home, there was this contest.  At first I thought the pilot was kind of acting like a geek, but what the heck, it's a long flight.  The rules were simple - at about the halfway point he (the pilot) would come on the radio and tell us some details of the flight;
- total miles
- current miles travelled (so far)
- current air speed, and current ground speed
- number of miles left in our trip
- travel time so far

The winner of the contest would be the one who most closely guessed the hours and minutes remaining in the flight, and would recieve a complimentary bottle of wine.  I decided to do some simple math; instead of all the dumb equations, I simply GUESSED - I guessed based on the total estimated flight time.  I handed Julie a piece of paper and she decided to give it a try to - she thought for a moment, and then wrote down her answer too.  A guy behind us walked up to our seat-partner and asked him to do some calculations for him (our seat-mate had a computer).  He even asked the pilot if it was "nautical miles" or "regular miles."  Well wouldn't you know it - Julie and this guy TIED.  They both guessed 2 hours, 46 minutes and the correct answer was 2:47.  I was very proud of my brilliant wife at that moment!  The tie-breaker question was "what is the combined number of years of service of the 7 member flight crew?" (both pilots and stewards/stewardesses)...the guy guessed 40-something, Julie guessed about 115, and the answer was 165+ - JULIE WON!

We're saving that bottle for something special...

See all the pictures here

MAHALO - thanks for reading.

Maui, Day 8

Ah, day 8. See all the pictures here -

Day 8 was a glorious day! Why? Because finally, the sun kind of came out, as witnessed by my first sunset picture of the entire trip.  Granted; it wasn't a full day of sunshine by any stretch (which we didn't get until Day 9); but it was better than what we'd been getting.  This is a shorter post because basically, we woke up, hit the beach, boogie-boarded, had lunch, and went on our Whale Trip.

We finally did get in the water for some boogie boarding; actually catching a few waves on the south end of Ka'anapali Beach; (the point where the surf lessons were). They weren't the best waves, but they were all we had and we were returning our boards later that day; so we went for it! The best thing that happened while boogie boarding was flipping hard once, which proceeded to clear out my sinuses and in effect, kicked the rest of my cold.

The Whale Trip: for those who have done the Pacific Whale Foundation Trip, here's what we did...
- we picked the evening trip which meant leaving at 2:30 PM, back at 4:30 PM
- we left from Lahaina, not from Ma'alaea harbour; although there also is a trip that still leaves from the harbour. We chose the Lahaina simply because it made dinner a lot easier.
- having said that, we preferred the Ma'alaea harbour trip as the Lahaina trip seemed to just go straight out from shore and then back in.
- we did see whales, it was fun, however, it wasn't quite the show we'd seen in the past. Part of it, AGAIN, was the weather; flat light (grey) makes it hard to see and also makes for bad pictures. Still, we did have fun.

We followed up the trip with a nice dinner at Kimo's - a great value for what you get. We had a very nice waiter who accomodated all of our needs; even splitting our plate at no extra charge. Our entree? Opakapaka - our favorite type of fish in Maui.

After dinner we went back to our beach where we ordered a "flourless" chocolate cake...accept only one problem - it wasn't flourless. Idiots. I enjoyed the cake while Julie had some ice-cream. Ugh.


See all the pictures here

Maui, Day 7

Straight to the pictures here.

Day 7: The Road to Hana. We agreed that if the weather looked bad, we’d hit the road again and do part of the road to Hana. Our plan was to till about mile marker 14-15 on the Hana Hwy, then turn around (once you hit the highway, it’s about 33-34 miles to Hana). What I wasn’t planning on was going all the way to Hana. For the last 15-20 miles, we were watching the gas gauge closely, relying on what we’d been told which was “gas can be found in Hana” (lucky for me, the gas station was open). I’m getting ahead of myself though…

Waterfalls: We stopped at quite a few waterfalls; most of them very easily accessible from the road, and a couple of them were really incredible. The one good thing about the weather is that all of the waterfalls were running fairly strong…too strong in one case which ruined the effect (one waterfall is called “The Three Bears” but in fact because there was so much water, is was more like one big bear than three). Still, all of the Falls were really cool to see and we did some minor scrambling to get to a couple of them.

One of my favorite parts was scrambling off the path a little to an upper fall. By far and away, though, best waterfall was the last one we stopped at, on our way out. Our guidebook warned that technically, we weren’t supposed to be hiking on the road you had to go on to get to the Falls – but we went for it anyways and were rewarded with a huge, cascading water-fall that rivals Snoqualmie Falls…it was powerful, and beautiful.

One of our other memorable moments was at one of the parks we stopped at. The park had a paved trail that led to a couple of small waterfalls; however, our guidebook spoke of a much better waterfall hire up. We set on the small dirt trail and ended up at a culvert of some kind. The only way to cross the culvert was along this 12” wide walkway – on one side, if you fell, you’d simply fall into the culvert of rushing water. On the other side, if you fell, you’d fall a little furter…about 50-60’ – yikes! We pressed on and were rewarded with privacy and a nice waterfall into a pool. We hiked around a little further and found a couple more of these such “crossings” – apparently, the culverts help to irrigate the land below. I finally put my foot down when we came to one crossing which was much longer than the others…

The road: The Hana Highway would be better named “The Hana crawl-way” as many people literally “creep” along the road. And if you know me well, you know that I hate slow or bad drivers…and there were plenty of them on this road; you know, slowing down to 5-10 mph around every corner. Further, there’s really no places to pass; you have to hope that 1) the drivers know they’re slow, 2) the drivers see you behind them, and 3) they are polite enough to pull over and let you pass. Needless to say, on the drive in, the last 45 minutes or so (about 12-15 miles), a lady driving a car didn’t seem to appreciate items 1, 2 or 3, and she ended up with about 8-10 of us following her quite slowly.

We found another nice taco stand for lunch, although nothing topped the “marinated Kalua Pork” that we got the day before. Still, a good place for lunch and definitely a “local” flavor.

On the way back we stopped in a surfer town to check out a natural foods store they had and Julie was in heaven…I think she could have stayed there for a few hours. The store was quite large and carried a number of Gluten Free items…so we stocked up a bit.

On the way back from Hana we got our first “really cool” whale sighting, the first of 3. Julie spotted them and I made in illegal left turn into one of those beach parks…they were very close to shore and we watched them in the light rain for about 30 minutes.

Straight to the pictures here.

Maui, Day 6

Straight to the pictures here.

Day 6 Dawned, well, it dawned cloudy. That didn’t stop us, however, from a lot of fun. We started out heading back to Honolua Bay; not to snorkel this time, but simply to enjoy the lush forest area, take some pictures and climb some vines. Aside from the climbing, Julie also grabbed a couple of passion-fruits and popped them open to expose their lovely innards…no, we didn’t partake of the goodness.

Following Honolua, we headed north, continuing along the highway and enjoying the changing scenery. That is one thing that we discovered about Maui – it is an extremely diverse island where you can enjoy lush tropical areas, beaches, arid dry lands, waterfalls, and so much more. The island has two big volcanoes on it; one on the northish side, the other on the southish side. In both cases, the Windward side of the island is extremely tropical complete with cascading waterfalls, and lots of rain. The Leeward sides of the mountains are much drier; (and, no big surprise that most of the tourist spots are on the leeward side).

Ok, back to our day – we headed north and next stopped at the olivine pools. The pools were cool, but would have been a whole lot neater if the sun had been out. Still, worth the stop and we also managed to find another small blow-hole. We kept going into the small village of Kahakuloa, where we stopped for some of the “world’s best banana bread.” To be sure, it was good, but there were about 4-5 places on the island that bragged about their bread…hard to say who’s was best.

It was at this point we realized we could drive around the entire north coast; something that wasn’t open back in 2002 when we honeymooned here. Since the weather was not improving, we decided to go for it. The drive was nice and we enjoyed the changing scenery and the small village or two that we passed.

Eventually we made to the city of Wailuku; not much to write home about (for all of you who want to move to Maui, Wailuku is probably a place you could find affordable housing). Wailuku didn’t have much going for it, but we did manage to find a place to stop for lunch before heading to the “Io Needle.” The pictures in the guide-book were amazing; the needle itself left something to be desired. It was extremely crowded with a couple of tourist buses and signs everywhere telling you to stay on the path. The aggravating part was that there were numerous foot-paths heading off in other directions that were SO tempting to take…another time, maybe.

On our way back to our hotel we did two more things; one, we stopped at the Petroglyphs which are just south of Lahaina. This was a real highlight for both of us, especially Julie. Many of these petroglyphs are hundreds of years old. We were the only ones there for most of our time and we walked around looking at many of them, trying to determine which ones were authentic and which ones might be a little graffiti. After the petroglyphs, our plan was to headed back into town for a little beach time.

Straight to the pictures here.  

Maui, Day 5

Maui Day 5 (Friday) dawned a beautiful "Bellingham Grey" - only about 30 degrees warmer...(although you'll see Julie's blue fleece make a few more appearances today). Given the weather still wasn't great for a beach day, we jumped into the car and headed North.  Click here to see all the pictures from day 5.

Our first stop was to Honolua Bay. This bay is arguably the best snorkel spot on the island; namely, because it's part of the Mokuleia Marine Life Conservation District. In other words, it's protected from man (no spear fishing, or fishing of any kind). The only problem with the Bay is depending on the weather, the surf, and a fresh-water river that feeds into the Bay, it can either be the best snorkeling on the island or a murky mess that you don't even want to enter. We had experienced both and were hopeful of the best...and we were not disappointed. Even though it was mostly cloudy, the water was fairly clear and we enjoyed some great snorkeling, including a huge school of fish that we swam with for a bit. In addition, we saw a couple of sea turtles from the shore who were apparently in some kind of mating ritual we believe. They were at the surface but we were told to "stay away from them" (and we complied). The snorkeling was great - you'll have to wait until the Day 6 post to see a few pictures though.



Following the snorkel and "warming up," (yes, we got in the car and cranked the heat), we decided to check out a couple of new things - namely, the Nakalele blowhole. Amazingly, we hadn't really ventured to this part of the island before (we will, at this point, credit the big blue "Maui revealed" book - an excellent book for some tips on the island). It described an "alien landscape" along with a powerful blowhole. I did my homework to make sure we saw it at high-tide on a day when the surf was up a little and we were not disappointed. The only thing that would have made it better would have been some sun and blue sky. You can hike all the way down to the blowhole (as some others we saw did) but you'd risk getting very wet. The landscape around the area was "alien," just as described. The holes in the rock are caused by the spray of the salt water eating things away.

After the blowhole we headed into town to one of my favorite "mixed plate" places called "Aloha Mixed Plate" where we dined on some wonderful pulled pork and coconut shrimp (so good!). The rest of the day we hung out by our pool, read books, relaxed, and went into town for our traditional "Bubba Gump" dinner.  Click here to see all the pictures from day 5.