Chicago

8 degrees. Feels like -4.

Friday, day twelve- Aloha 'oe

We stayed at the Waikiki Parc. Slept in. Walked down Waikiki beach. Repacked our luggage because we picked up a new carry-on suitcase. Then we checked out and drove out to the Dole Pineapple Plantation, a classic tourist trap with demonstration gardens, a huge maze that we’ve never gone in and a very large gift and snack shop with all things Dole and Pineapple. If you can think of it, Dole has found a way to put their name or pineapple logo on it.

We split a Dole Whip and then headed back to town for dinner at Roy’s. As we got closer to the Parc, where we had left our bags checked at the bell/valet desk, traffic was terrible and the tiny streets around our hotel were jammed with cars. A line of buses, bumper to bumper, nearly blocked our access to the hotel. A broken water main a few miles away had diverted traffic right down the street by the hotel.

We finally got down the little road and the valets said we could leave our car there while we went across the street to dinner. By the time we were done with our delicious dinner and Roy’s famous chocolate soufflé, traffic was a little better and we were able to make our way to the airport.

The beautiful fresh flowers in the ladies room at Roy’s. Typical of the entire restaurant.

By the way, the staff at Roy’s and at the Parc are great. Everyone at the Parc was professional and attentive, every time we needed something. And every employee at Roy’s says hello if you pass by them on your way to your table, and thanks you for coming if you pass by them as you are leaving. And the service was great between the coming and leaving, too. So impressive at both places.

Miles, the best valet/bell staffer in Honolulu

The plane took off in 75 degree weather at 10:15 p.m. Hawaii time and we arrived in chilly Salt Lake City at 6:50 a.m. Saturday morning.

Thursday, day eleven

We flew to Honolulu today. The handle on one suitcase broke when we got it from the luggage return.

There are lots of things to do on the island of Oahu- beach stuff, Pearl Harbor, Polynesian Cultural Center, snorkeling, hiking, gardens, watercraft thrill sports, museums, etc. There are also lots and lots of people. And lots of restaurants, bars, clubs and nearly limitless opportunities for shopping- from cheap to appallingly expensive.

We prefer the other islands, but the overnight visit is totally worth it because we get to visit with the H family, admire three amazing and darling kids and catch up on what’s new in their busy lives. It’s a tradition that’s probably coming to an end. Papa H is graduating from medical school this spring - hurray and congratulations!- and they’re just waiting now to find out where he’ll do his residency. We’re rooting for any place where we can still come for a visit now and then.

These pictures give you an idea of why we prefer the Big Island

Beach next to our condo in Kona

Waikiki beach in Honolulu

Wednesday, day ten

This is basically our last day of real vacation. We fly to Honolulu on Thursday morning to see friends and fly home on Friday night. Any day that you have to get yourself and all your stuff to and from an airport isn't really a vacation day.

Novell needed O for the morning so we swapped our early morning beach hike for an afternoon one. I took a few pictures and did some packing while O worked. One of the cruise ships was offshore today.

Our cell phones don't work in the condo, but the internet is great. When he is working and talking to Boston at the same time, O sits on the lanai with his phone resting at the far edge of the table where it can pick up the signal. There's no electricity out there, so we've stretched the power cord from a living room outlet, through the door and over to the computer on the little table that we've scooted to the side to put a little slack in the cord. One perk- the best office view around!

This is the little beach beside the condos. Perfect for kids and families.
You can see our condo building in the last picture.

The Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park is just north of the boat harbor. There are the ruins of ancient villages, areas with petroglyphs and a coastal trail that goes out along the beach from a fish trap to a fishpond and then inland across some lava fields. We parked our car at the trail head side of the parking lot and headed out.

We started here

And walked along here

And through here

And looked at petroglyphs here

To get here

and here

and here (another perfect little beach for little kids)

Then walked to the far end of this beach

Passing birds like this

And this turtle

Before we looked at sea urchins in tidal pools

And then we turned back and retraced out steps. Before we left the park, we talked to a ranger who told us that the turtle is a repeat visitor to the beach. She is exceptionally large. Her shell alone is 38” long.

We went to Huggo’s again for dinner. I had a nice little Caesar salad with local baby romaine lettuce, just like last time. O always has the heirloom tomato and sweet onion salad. Huggo’s has lots of nice fish dishes and they are famous for their teriyaki steak, too. Last time I had fish served with a yummy Hamakua goat cheese polenta. This time I went for the teriyaki steak and asked our server, Francisco (from Santiago), if he could get it for me with the kabocha squash risotto instead of the steamed rice. He did and it was nice.

There was a vog haze that made the sunset very colorful.

Tuesday, day nine

Today is another Temple day. Last Tuesday there were only a few people, but this time there are lots of people. We recognize some of the people we met at church and they recognize us. Traditional handshakes/kisses to the cheek are exchanged.

After the Temple, O spends a few hours at Novell, and then we decide to give the shop in Hawi one more try.

Novell West. . . Way, way west

We call the owner on her cell phone. Yes, she is feeling much better and is at her shop today. So we hit the road again. Just like our previous two trips to the area, there is an intermittent light and misty rainfall as we get closer. But since it is late in the day, the sun is low in the sky and shining through most of the time and we get to enjoy a spectacular series of rainbows as we approach the little town. As with most beautiful things, a camera can’t do it justice, but I have O pull over and give it a try anyway.





At times, the rainbow approaches an intensity somewhere between iridescence and neon brilliance, and for a few minutes forms a complete half-circle, touching the ground on both ends, and far too wide and close for my little camera.

We’ve pretty much decided against the Koa bench before we get to the shop, but get the Koa and driftwood floral stands that we admired and head over to Waimea for dinner on our way back to the condo. As we drive over the rolling pastures and ranchland between the two towns, we see our first double rainbow with the bows so close they touch and look like one big rainbow with a repeating series of colors. The camera can never catch what we see, and with no safe place to stop and take a picture in the winding road, we just admire it and make it a memory.

Monday, day eight- A whale of a tail

We spent the morning whale watching with Captain Dan. We’ve gone whale watching with him many times and always had a good time. This was another good excursion. From past experience, we knew how to snag our favorite seats above deck at the front of the boat.

All whale watches follow pretty much the same routine. Motor around looking and listening for signs of whales, and then stop and watch when you find one. Most times you’re lucky, and a few times your not. We were reasonably lucky this time. We saw several whales and spent time at each sighting to wait for them to come up again before moving on. At one point, Captain Dan cut the engines and put a hydrophone into the water, warning us that there probably wouldn’t be anything to hear. But we could hear one whale, quite a ways away. Not as spectacular as the recordings we’ve heard, but still a pretty cool real-life experience.

The other highlight of the cruise was seeing three flukes at once. We saw three whales together and they all started to dive at about the same time. Just as the first fluke slipped beneath the water the other two whales had their tails up, too. Sorry folks, no picture of that. If you’ve ever been whale watching, you know that most of your pictures turn out to be vast expanses of water with a tiny, shiny black spot somewhere if you’re lucky. I had decided not to try to catch everything with my camera, since it is mostly wasted effort. Even with a really nice camera, by the time you see the whale, and then find it in your viewfinder, the whale is frequently back under the water. My camera is a little pocket-sized cybershot. And at the time, I was peering between two people who had scurried to the front of the boat to stand in front of me with their cameras.

Typical whale shot- look carefully, there really is a whale there!

This is what another shot like that looks like after it's been cropped- a lot.

At one point, we were cruising past the opening to the harbor and noticed that there was a lot of dolphin activity so we paused there to watch the spinner dolphins for a while. They are so interesting to watch and were very close all around the boat so that we could hear them surface, breath and splash. Fun!

After the whales, we spent a little time with Novell and then headed up to Hawi (1-1½ hrs.) to look at a piece of furniture. Aargh! The shop we had browsed in on Thursday was closed. The shopkeeper next door said the owner was sick. We killed time by slowly, slowly browsing every other little shop in the tiny, tiny town of Hawi, and then headed to Waimea for dinner at Daniel Thiebaut’s. Nice food but not the greatest service. We also decided that this was the place where one of our credit cards went missing when we couldn’t locate it later in the week. Couldn’t convince the restaurant to check the places we thought they should check. Decided to let the cc company deal with it for us.

Sunday, day seven

We started the day with buttermilk pancakes at the condo and went to church 9:00 (We usually just have fruit from the farmer’s market for breakfast, and generally skip lunch, because we like to have dinner early while we watch the sunset, but we splurged with the pancakes today). Then O spent some time “at the office.” We ate the leftovers of different restaurant meals for a mid-afternoon lunch. In the late afternoon, we walked into town. They have a sort of street fair every third Sunday and close a section of the main drag, Ali’i Drive, through the old part of town. We saw several bands along the street and this one made me think of a certain lady I know who’s looking to make a career change. She used to be quite the drummer, so I thought I’d offer her this little bit of inspiration.

Great climate, casual dress code and you can set your own hours!

Watched the sunset from start to finish while O communed with Novell.

Saturday, day six- Hellooo, Mama!

After our morning walk and some Novell time for O, we drove around to the Hilo side of the island. That’s right- again! But this time we went south around the bottom of the island to get there. Here is a picture of a turtle that we saw by our condo when we started our walk.

Our first stop was at Kimura’s, and old-fashioned, old-time fabric store in the little town of Kealakekua. It’s a fun shop, crammed with literally thousands of bolts of fabric filling every nook and cranny. The walls are lined with built-in wooden shelves with all sorts of notions and odds-and-ends (ranging from cookware to cosmetics), ancient and modern, familiar and mystifying, that are organized in a way understood only by the proprietors. No electronic or automatic anything (except the register and card-swiper). Everything is measured on a single little table by hand. If you want to see what fabric stores used to be like, before they became design superstores and craft centers, check out the H. Kimura Store- a genuine blast from the past. We got another piece of Hawaiian-print fleece (yes, there really is such a thing) and some tablecloth material. Then we headed on down the road. After another 30 minutes or so, we were back into the long stretches of bleak, barren lava that cover so much of the western and southern part of the island.

Shortly before reaching Naalehu, we could see South Point, southernmost point in the United States, through the vog (volcanic smog), and just faintly make out part of the wind farm there. Then we pulled in to town and stopped at the Naalehu Bakery, southernmost bakery in the United States. We had a little local ice cream and hit the road again, driving past the southernmost Post Office, the southernmost church, the southernmost...well, you get the picture.

We stopped in Volcano National Park for a quick walk through the Thurston (Nahuku) Lava Tube. It’s always a nice little hike because of the rainforest birds that are always singing. Their songs echo and fill the secluded little pocket of trees and ferns (We tried recording their songs with our iPhones. Check back later to see if it worked). It only takes about 15-20 minutes to hike down, through and back up again. It’s hard to believe that the wet little rainforest tucked into the low area of the lava tube is just a few hundred yards from areas that are a lot drier and almost barren. It’s one of my favorite spots on the island.

After leaving the Park, we pretty much cruised right up through Hilo and along the Hamakua coast and over to Waimea again. This time we stopped in Waimea to have dinner at (insert the strains of the Heavenly Choir here....) Fujimamas. That’s right, they’re back! (Yes, this is another food posting. Part of our fun when traveling is eating at favorite restaurants. It’s amazing we don’t have to hire someone to strap us to furniture dollies and roll us around town while we’re here) Anyway, back to Fujimamas. They’re an Asian fusion and sushi restaurant. We were disappointed to see that they were no longer open in Kona last year. Then we heard from our hiking guide that there was a nice restaurant in Waimea called Fujimamas. Our ears perked right up! Apparently the owners were tired of commuting from Waimea to Kona for work every day, so they closed the restaurant in Kona, spent a few months looking for a location closer to home and then reopened in Waimea. They had actually been in Tokyo before Kona and Waimea.

We split some wok-seared asparagus and a shrimp/ avocado roll. Then O had a tasty ahi entrée and I had an amazing seafood chowder- shrimp and scallops in a velvety sweet corn, coconut and lemongrass “bisque.” Absolutely, amazingly onolicious! I actually toyed with idea of getting some as takeout a couple of days later, when we were in town again, but restrained myself.

After dinner, it was another drive through the dark, with more “Wait, Wait...”

Friday, day five

Today we had planned to go to the Vanilla Farm on the Hamakua Coast (northeast) for the “Vanilla Experience Lunch and Tour” and then we were going to drive down south of Hilo for a boat ride out to see the lava from the ocean side before we came back to Hilo to eat at one of our very favorite restaurants, Café Pesto, in the S. Hata building right in town on the bay. We decided to cancel the boat tour because the lava had stopped flowing into the ocean after a small earthquake a couple of weeks ago and hadn't resumed yet. Maybe next year. But that did take off the pressure for dashing from the farm to the boat.

Our day started with a little Novell time for O, and then we headed up through Waimea and around and down the Hamakua coast.

We enjoyed our time at the Vanilla plantation. Lunch was delicious- vanilla everything. We enjoyed “orange-vanilla marinated chicken breast and caramelized onions atop herbed focaccia bread with Vanilla-Mango Chutney aioli, Way South West roasted red potatoes, farm fresh organic greens with Vanilla-Raspberry Vinaigrette, crumbled feta and Vanilla-Honey-Peppered Pecans, Vanilla Lemonade and Hawaiian vanilla bean ice cream." The grower talked to us about his farm while we ate. Then we went down to one of the shade houses to see how they grow their vanilla. Tasty and interesting visit.

We didn’t go into the shade houses that had blooming or fruiting vines, but here are pics from a house with vines that are about a year from production. Vanilla orchids are an understory plant, climbing on trees where they are partially shaded. The pvc stands take the place of the trees and give the vines a place to climb.

On our way down to Hilo, we made a stop at Akaka Falls State Park for our traditional hike to the falls. To get there, you take a road through the little, tiny town of Honomu and out across the abandoned cane fields where there are now a few houses and small farms. You would never guess there is this fabulous little park because it is actually a ravine out in the middle of the old sugar cane fields and you can’t even tell there is something there when you reach the parking area. Once you leave your car and start down the trail, though, it is a completely different world with lush tropical vegetation covering the walls of the ravine, and smalls streams, gentle cascades and mini-falls all along the trails. Every step of the way, you can hear the gurgling, trickling and burbling of the water that is draining into the ravine. There is another nice waterfall along the trail called Kahuna Falls, but we didn’t take any pictures of it this year. Here are a few pictures of Akaka Falls from our hike this year.

For the past couple of years, the falls trail has been partially closed while they renovated the trail. Finally this year, we were able to walk the entire loop trail again.

We had time to kill when we got to Hilo so we drove on through and out to Akatsuka’s Orchid house (on the road to Volcano National Park) to look around before dinner. There are always interesting things to see there and you can look around for free (sorry, orchid junkies, but we didn’t take any pictures there this year). Then it was off to Hilo and Café Pesto.

Enjoyed and early dinner at Café Pesto. They have absolutely the best calamari appetizer ever- thick, meaty pieces of coconut-crusted calamari on an arugula/won bok and pickled ginger slaw with a honey-mustard dipping sauce. O has been anticipating this for months. The portion is generous and as usual, he had the calimari appetizer and one of their excellent, local-fresh salads to make a meal of it. I had my favorite, the half-moon shrimp nachos with a local sweet corn relish in a mild chili dressing.

The nachos are actually flat, crispy wonton wrappers topped with smoked mozzarella, shrimp and cilantro sour cream. Spoon a little corn relish on each nacho and Mmmmm! It’s just amazing. Pesto’s is also known for their fabulous pizzas and they have assorted pastas, salads and a few meaty dishes as well. A little upscale, but worth it! We left with a piece of their coconut tart with vanilla cream sauce to enjoy later. A very foodie day.

We made the drive back around and through Waimea, at the bottom of the northern part of the island and down into Kona in the dark, listening to “Wait, Wait....Don’t Tell Me!” podcasts, laughing and enjoying the lights of the different small towns and resorts along the highway.

Thursday, day four

Today was our big hike day. We met our guide at 6:45 in the morning, drove for an hour and a half up the Kohala coast to Hawi and then transferred to a 6-wheel-drive Pinzgauer to off-road through abandoned sugar cane fields, streambeds and gullies to get to our trailhead.

We hiked around past several pretty waterfalls. It was overcast and cool for most of the time but we never got rained on. Here are some pictures from our hike.

The Pinzgauer

One of the streams we crossed

We came to a very muddy stretch and had to get out of the Pinzgauer while our guide took it through a spot where he thought it might slide off the trail. Once he got it up the slope, we all climbed back in and we were on our way again.

A pretty overlook near the trailhead

This is what a lot of the trail was like

There is an old irrigation flume running through the mountains and hills in the part of the island where we were hiking. Some stretches were carved out of the cliff faces and other parts were tunneled through the mountain. We floated through a section of the flume a few years ago before part of it collapsed during an earthquake. The flume is slowly being repaired now and maybe some day we will be able to "flume da ditch" again.

A couple of times the trail passed sections of the flume


Here are a few of the waterfalls we hiked to

The view from our picnic spot at the end of our hike

It was a nice hike. We browsed through some shops and galleries in the little town of Hawi while our guide moved all our stuff from the Pinzgauer to the van. We got back to Kona in the late afternoon, got cleaned up and walked about a mile up the road to try a new restaurant. All in all, a day well spent.