Day 6: Church, Falls, and Fire

Far too early on Sunday morning, we we woke up and got ready for church. For some unfathomable reason, a lot of Mormon congregations meet at 8am in Hawaii. Luckily, the church building was not too far from where we were staying. We really enjoyed our first church service in Hawaii. The building was partly open to the outside air--I wonder how they keep animals out? Some of the men wear lava-lavas instead of suit pants (with a white shirt and tie on top), and the Bishopric all wore black leis. And, of course, they start every meeting and class by saying "AloHA!" and then everyone responds back the same way. Everyone was very friendly and came up and talked to us. And it's always great to go to Church! The Gospel is universally true. :)

The plan for the day was to go to church and keep things restful by taking a scenic drive up the the Hamakua coast (which is the east side of the island). The Big Island of Hawaii is, well, big--and has lots of different types of terrain to see. We mostly came there for the volcano (the island of Hawaii is the only of the Hawaiian islands with active volcanoes), but we wanted to see some of the waterfalls and coastline too.

However, we couldn't bring ourselves to do the drive without first taking a hefty nap back at the rental. We finally roused ourselves from that, we first drove through Hilo, where we saw a HUGE banyan tree (the picture is through the car window--sorry.) By the way, our car was not a convertible this time, but we *did* luck out and get one with a sunroof! It was pretty sweet too--and actually more comfortable than the Mustang. It even had heated seats--not that anyone really needs them in Hawaii, though. Man, I could sure use those seats right about now in Illinois!

Anyways, our next stop was Akaka falls, which is just a little walk down from the parking lot through exotic, lush jungle foliage. (The picture at the beginning of this post is Akaka falls). The next picture is a place on the coast where a sad thing happened--a bunch of school kids ran out to see why the water had receded in the 1940's and got swept out to sea when the tsunami came back in. I think they have some sort of memorial there, but we just saw it from above.

The final destination was Waipio Valley. We didn't hike down to the bottom, but we definitely enjoyed the view from the top and thought it was very cool that the beach is black sand.

From there, we drove back to Hilo, had dinner in our rental place, and headed out again, this time driving south towards the volcano to see the place where the lava enters the water. I'd heard it was really spectacular to view it at night, and since we didn't get to do it on Saturday, it was our only chance to get down there in the dark. You park in this parking lot and walk a ways on the lava rock (we had to use head lamps since it was dark by now) until you get to the coast. They don't let you get very close to the actual lava, but you can see this huge red glow and watch the lava hit the ocean. We had binoculars and sat there in total awe watching new land forming. (The pictures didn't turn out well, though.) We stayed until just before it started to POUR again--we did bring umbrellas, but the wind blew the rain at us anyway. At least we didn't have 11 miles to walk back to the car this time, though.

Day 5: Rest, Recoop, and Relocate!

The first order of business the next day after our hike was to sleep in! I then awoke and cooked up a fantastical breakfast of French toast. Kevin and I were incredibly sore when we woke up, and my blisters were really something else. We hobbled around the house and were fearful of going up the stairs to the loft because we weren't sure we would be able to get back down (those knees took a while to recover.)

My original thought in planning our itinerary was that this day would be reserved in case we needed 3 days to complete the hike, and if we happened to have extra time, we could go enjoy the beach or try one of the zip line courses nearby (which sounded AWESOME.) Both of these thoughts were totally laughable, though--we were way to sore to think about doing anything that involved walking more than 10 feet at a time. Plus, it was still raining. Plus, we had 2 backpacks full of sopping wet gear to try to deal with. I worked several hours washing and drying clothes and trying to blow dry our backpacks to some sort of reasonable level of dryness. Our shoes were completely hopeless. I put them in a garbage bag inside our packs, and instead Kevin wore his river/reef shoes and I wore my sandals. Mine were normal looking, but Kevin's were rather entertaining to see with socks and jeans.

Soon we were checking out of our beloved vacation rental house and driving back to the airport. Around this time, I started feeling rather sick. Apparently, hiking for 11 hours in the pouring rain doesn't improve one's ability to fight off illness. My cough (which had started the day we left for Hawaii) had gotten a LOT worse, and I felt just icky in general. Once we got to the airport for our flight to the Big Island, I also started having digestive issues. I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say that sometimes taking antibiotics isn't the best thing for your digestive tract.

Our plane was a little delayed, and as I mentioned, I felt yucky, so when we finally did arrive on the Big Island, we opted not to drive straight to the lava night viewing place (we wouldn't have made it before they closed anyways because of the delay) and instead just bought some groceries, had dinner, and went to bed.

The place I had booked for us to stay on the Big Island was another vacation rental from vrbo.com, of course, and it was also a really good deal. Not quite as fancy as the last place, but really cute, very spacious, and only $75 a night! (All 3 photos on this page were from this 2nd rental). It was situated about 15 minutes outside of Hilo, in a very rural jungle-y area. At night all these frogs chirped--they sounded like birds actually--and made this really relaxing backdrop sound. The lady who rented it out was really nice (we actually talked to her a few times, whereas the last time we never did see the owner). So if any of you happen to be going to Hilo anytime soon and are looking for a great place to stay...

Day 4: Utterly Soaked

We got up at dawn, ate breakfast on the beach (where I saw either a bunch of dolphins or sharks--I'm not sure which!), packed it up, and then headed out to start the grueling trek for the second time in as many days! Luckily, my knees were doing much better after a good night's rest, and I was able to (mostly) doctor up my blisters with moleskin. We stopped to take some pictures of the valley in the morning, since we hadn't had time the night before. It really is an enchanting place. There's actually a little group of hippies who live there permanently--we met a couple of them briefly. They drink straight from the streams and some hike around barefoot. They were nice to us and mostly kept their distance. It's a little strange, but then I think I can understand how you could travel to Kalalau beach and just decide never to go back!

Things were going fine, and then just before we hit that treacherous stretch, it started to rain. Things were getting slippery, and I kept sliding back down the trail, which became rather scary in places. Kevin claims it was not that bad, but I was truly frightened for a short time. Luckily, we made it out of that difficult section just before it really started pouring. We were really blessed, because I'm sure we made it through that part just before it become just too dangerous and totally impassable in the rain.

As we hit Hanakoa falls again, we gratefully sat at the little sheltered picnic table at the Hanakoa campground. There was a Canadian guy there taking shelter too. He said he and his friends had started out too late the day before and ended up having to camp at Hanakoa instead of Kalalau that night. He was more out of shape than his buddies and felt like he was slowing them down (he also had a reeeally heavy pack), so he opted to wait at the campsite while his friends hiked to Kalalau and then back to Hanakoa that day. (By the way, most people do something like that, spending more than one night on the trail so they can take it a bit slower--there are 2 campgrounds besides the one at the end that people camp at.) His friends had set out really early so they could get back to Hanakoa before the rain, but the rain came a little too soon. A man and his mother soon came up from behind us and sheltered there too. They had gotten separated from the rest of their group, who had lagged behind and apparently turned back. As those guys prepared to wait out the storm at Hanakoa until the rest of their groups could cross over (which could have been at least a day later), we let them borrow our Steri-Pen to sterilize their water (do you guys know what a SteriPen is? You should--they are awesome!), wished them luck, and struck out again, knowing we had to hurry if we were going to make it. We never found out what happened to those guys--I still wonder about it. I assume they all made it out safe (or we would have heard about it on the news I expect.)

The rest of the day is sort of one very wet blur. It poured and poured non-stop, and we had to take a slower pace because of the extra slipperyness (and because our sore knees had to take the descents slower), so even though we started out a lot earlier than the day before, we were still racing the clock. At one point we gave up on trying to avoid the streams of water that were now coursing down the trail and found that things were actually much less slippery if you walked right in the middle of the flowing water. When we reached the various stream/rivers that we had crossed very carefully the day before (either by hopping from rock to rock or by putting on river shoes and wading), we just plowed right through--our feet could not possibly get any wetter at that point, after all. Finally, FINALLY, we made it to the end (or the beginning, rather). We were so utterly soaked, and starting to get cold. (Most of the day we weren't cold--just wet, but once the sun started to set it got chilly). It was just getting dark when we reached the trail head. Once again, we were so blessed--it would have been terrible to climb down those rocks with just our headlamps! The last thing we saw on the trail was a big sign that said the trail was closed due to extreme weather--ha! (Obviously, that sign wasn't there when we had set out the day before!) We were so blessed that our timing worked out just in the nick of time so that we could get out safely despite the weather.

I took out the quarters I had carefully packed to make a call with the payphone at the trailhead to call the taxi. I dialed the number, and got voicemail! I tried again (with another 2 quarters) in a few minutes, and the dispatcher told me that she would send a taxi, but she wasn't 100% sure that he could make it out because the bridge from Hanalei might have been washed out by all the rain. Call back in 10 minutes, she said, and she'd have found out by then. I rummaged around and thankfully found 50 more cents to call back again, and to our relief, she said the bridge was not washed out. (Just a side note--we actually could have walked the 2 miles back to our vacation rental, but it was cold, we were soooo wet and completely exhausted, that we could hardly bear the thought.) The taxi was on its way! The lady told me, "Now make sure to wait from him because he's making a special trip out to Hanalei for you." Yeah--where exactly did she think we would have gone, I wonder? "We will definitely wait for him," I said. The taxi was a bit late, because he was afraid to drive over some water running on the road, but it turned out to be not too deep so he braved it. He even brought us towels to sit on! We gave him a very, VERY nice tip!

So we were finally back in our beautiful rental, and within minutes were enjoying the hot water in the jetted tub--HEAVEN!!! We ate ravenously, tried to at least sort of lay out some of our sopping gear in the car port, and collapsed into our luxurious, wonderfully off-the-ground bed!

Day 3: Na Pali Adventurers

We let ourselves sleep in a little, had a big breakfast, and then met the taxi guy who drove us about 2 miles to the trail head of the Kalalau trail. I think we started hiking around 10 am if I remember right--which, as it turns out, is really not quite early enough to start this hike, but we managed okay. We picked up some walking sticks at the trail head (people leave them there for others to use--and thank goodness! We REALLY needed them!) shouldered our packs, and got started. I was so excited--this was really something I'd been looking forward to and training for since we first decided to go to Hawaii.

The Kalalau trail, which winds up and down along part of the Na Pali coastline, is quite simply one of the most beautiful hikes you can possible imagine. You may not think you know what the Na Pali coast is, but trust me--you have seen it. It shows up in movies and the like a lot--in Jurassic Park, for instance, and the creation part of the temple video, and lots of other places. And what makes it even more special is that you really can't see it by
car because there are no roads. People either take a catamaran on the ocean and see it from offshore, take a helicopter ride over it, or hike it on foot. We chose the latter, of course.

The trail is 11 miles each way, which really doesn't sound like that much, I know. But it is a VERY difficult trail. It is constant up and down--you go over 5 ridges and down into 5 valleys in all-- and in the end you ascend (and descend) 4,500 feet--EACH way. The Sierra Club rates it a 9 out of 10 in difficulty. So yeah, it's strenuous. (But OH is it worth it!) I've been exercising and lifting weights a ton in the last few months to prepare (well, that's not the only reason, but that was one good motivation!) and was in excellent shape, if I do say so myself. I found the hike very challenging--but not crossing the line into being unpleasantly so. The annoying thing is that Kevin didn't train at all and kept up just fine--he is one of those crazy "I don't have to do anything to be fit" type of people. Grrr....but I digress.

So we started out around 10 and were quickly challenged by the steep, rocky, muddy, slippery terrain, but also soon rewarded by the views--I'll let the pictures speak for themselves on that. Around 1pm we made it to the first major break point, which was a beach called Hanakapiai--gloriously beautiful but outstandingly dangerous. In the picture you can see a sign that warns people of the dangerous tides and currents and then has a tally mark for every person who has died in the water there--I think the number was over 60! So we stayed away from the water. We had lunch and I used the composting toilet which is setup at the campsite there (sooooo many flies! Ewwwwww!) and we were off again.

Out of the Hanakapiai valley, we went up endless switchbacks up and up and up...and then down again. And then we did it again! During this interval we spotted several mountain goats climbing around on the cliffs--the ones in this picture really picked out a good view for themselves! We also saw some wild pigs during the hike, but we didn't get any pictures--they were too fast!

The next stopping place we reached was a valley called Hanakoa, which also has some incredible water falls. (You can see the falls in this picture, barely--they're really super long off in the distance.) If we had had more time, we would have made the hike out to see them up close, but we didn't have any time to spare--in fact, we were starting to feel worried about whether we'd make it to the end by dark. We had some food and rested a little bit (good thing, because by this time we were pretty beat. But it's amazing how much better you can feel with some more fuel in your belly.)

We then embarked on the stretch of the trail that is notorious for being treacherous--the trail is narrow, the cliffs pretty steep, and the trail is totally unprotected, so people with a fear of heights do not do well here. We actually found it not as bad as I'd read about--we kept waiting for the really hard part, then laughed when we realized we'd already passed it! (BUT, we soon learned it is much harder when it is wet--more on that in the next day's post.)

By this time, we were tired, I had blisters, and my knees were really starting to give out. The very last portion of the hike is doooown into the Kalalau valley, which was tough on my knees. But we had to keep going, so we did. We didn't have any time to stop for pictures any more, as dusk was approaching fast. We finally entered the valley just as the sun went down, and barely had time to revel in the fact that we had *made* it before we immediately went to work putting up our tent (in the dark). We ate a quick dinner (we opted not to pack a stove in the interest of weight, so all our food was cold stuff) and got ready for bed as fast as we could. We had to refill and purify our water (which we had done a few times on the trail too), and learned that the waterfall in the Kalalau valley is a very popular hangout spot for frogs--Kevin had to dodge them everywhere as he waded over to the falls. When that was done, we laid down to the sounds of HUGE crashing waves.

I was actually rather worried at this point, because my knees had gotten so weak by the end of the day's hike, and I had two large blisters. I was thinking it might be better to rest a day in the valley before heading back out again, but Kevin REALLy wanted to get back that nice bed in the vacation rental. Plus (and this was the clincher), the forecast was for heavy rain to start in the afternoon the next day. The Kalalau trail crosses many little streams and three bigger rivers. (Well, okay, they are actually streams too, but in New Mexico, we'd call them rivers.) The "rivers" often swell up with heavy rains and become very dangerous (they sweep you out to those dangerous seas that the sign was warning about), so they can become impassable to hikers--we didn't want to risk getting stuck in the valley for several days, so we decided we'd better head out early in the morning. So it was with a little bit of dread of the next day's journey that I went to be that night. But we slept pretty deeply, in our sleeping bag liners, but without sleeping bags (no point in bringing those!)

Hawaii Day 2: Who knew there was a Grand Canyon in Hawaii?

Early, very early, the day after we arrived in Honolulu, we set out again to catch a morning flight from Honolulu to the island of Kauai. Kauai is the oldest of the major Hawaiian islands, known as the "Garden Isle" because it so wet and green. Since it is an old island (the volcanoes on it are long dead), it has had lots of time for erosion to make amazing canyons and cliffs. Kauai is less populated (except by chickens--more on that later), slow paced, and spectacularly beautiful.

Once we arrived at the airport (a very open-air building, by the way--kind of strange that birds can fly in and out around the gates!), we picked up our rental car. They told us they were having a manager's special and for $5 a day more, we could upgrade from our compact to a convertible Mustang. We jumped at it, and were glad we did--it definitely made viewing the scenery that much better (at least, when it wasn't raining it did.) We didn't get any photos of our sweet ride, though--sorry.

We set out at once for the Waimea Canyon, which is sometimes called "The Grand Canyon of Hawaii." It really did look a lot like the Grand Canyon, except, well--greener. We drove around these windy roads to the very end of the road, where there is this overlook that is supposed to give a breath-taking view of the Kalalau beach (where we'd be hiking to later on in the trip). However, to the right is all we saw. I even followed the advice I read to get there early in the day before the fog rolled in...ah, well. We decided to take a short nap while we waited to see if the fog would clear (we were still tired from that 4am taxi ride), but alas, it only got worse. A second overlook was a tad better, but not much.

So we gave up on the coast overlooks and decided to get back to the canyon. Along the way, we met many MANY wild chickens. They are everywhere in Kauai (well, all of Hawaii really, but especially Kauai). This becomes a problem at 5am when the roosters start crowing, but actually they didn't bother us too much.

Anyways, we did a short hike (2-3 miles or something) along a ridge, which yielded many amazing views. (It was pretty chilly at first, though--I didn't expect to be wishing for a heavier jacket in Hawaii!) We hiked until we reached a little waterfall, a pool, and then further on a HUUUUGE water fall (which we were at the top of.) You can't see much of it in this first picture, since we were at the top, but later we saw it from an overlook across the way and you could see the whole length of it.

We also stopped and took some pictures at a few drive-up overlooks. Once we were done with those, we decided to start the long-ish drive *all* the way around to the other side of the island (no roads go across the island, only around the outside), where our vacation rental was and where we'd start our backpacking adventure the next day. We reeeeally needed to rest up from that, so we bought some groceries, had a simple dinner, and lazed around until turning in for an early bedtime. (We watched a little Cosby Show on the giant flat screen TV first, though!)

A word about our vacation rentals. I am very proud of the nice places we were able to stay and the work I put into finding them. I may have mentioned this before, but I have learned to really love planning vacations--I love finding awesome places and getting good deals. So I have to talk about these rentals because I spent hours picking the perfect ones. We scored really good prices by using vrbo.com, which I highly recommend. This first place was supposed to be just a studio apartment, but the owner ended up upgrading us to the larger one for free. So we paid just $105 a night (including taxes) for this amazing place with a full kitchen, jetted tub, super comfy bed, loft, outdoor roof patio/sun bed thing--the works! And, the best part was that the owner essentially gave us 3 nights for the price of 2, since we left for our overnight backpacking trip--we stayed there before and after the hike and she didn't charge us for the night in between. Sweet!

Our Hawaiian Holiday--It starts...

All right, dear friends! I'm starting my story of our now 2 months old trip to Hawaii-yay! For my blog, I will probably bore you with all the details--we may later make a "prettier" blog with pictures and minimal description, so if you want to wait for that one, I can't blame you. But if you want all the nitty-gritty details, read on! I am just going to post a day at a time, so this could time me a while to get the whole thing done. Of course, feel free to skip the words and look at the pictures. :)

We left for Hawaii VERY early in the morning on a Tuesday (after staying up VERY late to finish packing!). It happened to be just a few days after my birthday, and also just a few days after numerous stressful work and church-related special events. I guess my immune system was rather worn down, because on Monday night, I found my

self coming down with a cough, AND I found my gums getting infected. (Ever since I had my wisdom teeth out after they were horribly infected, my gums get infected every now and then if they get scratched or something. It’s not like gingivitis--I PROMISE I brush and floss!) In the past when this happened, it kept growing worse until the dentist prescribed antibiotics. So on Tuesday morning, I’m feeling fairly crappy from the cough thing and getting worried about my teeth—not that they were very bad, but I was afraid they’d get worse and worse and end up with a problem in the middle of our backpacking trip or something.

Kevin and I both flew out of Peoria, IL, which is about 1.5 hours away from our house. However, since our tickets were both frequent flier, we had to go with 2 different airlines, so we left on 2 different planes. I went through Chicago, and Kevin went through Dallas. I had a 3 hour layover in Chicago, and to my relief and happiness, I discovered there is a doctor's clinic *inside* O'Hare airport, and they saw my mouth and prescribed penicillin (and then gave it to me)! So that was quite a relief. I still felt rather yucky on the looooong ride from Chicago to Honolulu, but I was less worried.

I arrived a couple of hours before Kevin, and our plan was that I would go check into our hotel and Kevin would come on a later shuttle and meet me there. I had originally intended to walk down to Waikiki beach immediately after checking in, but the shuttle took longer than expected to get to the hotel, plus it was drizzly outside and I still felt sickish, and I was soooo tired from the traveling...so I just stayed in the room and read my book. At least we had a (TINY) balcony--couldn't see the beach from it, though. Only the crazy expensive hotels on Waikiki have ocean views. Our hotel room was about $100 for the night, which for Honolulu is very inexpensive. It was fine, but very small with uncomfortable beds. Luckily, we were just there one night, though.

When I first walked up to the hotel, I was astounded to find that the lobby was totally open-air and had no walls or doors at all. There was a roof, but one whole wall was open to the air. I marveled over this, but I had yet to learn that half the buildings in Hawaii are like that--including parts of the airports, actually!

Kevin arrived a couple of hours later, and we went to find something to eat. We didn't feel like walking very far, so we just found a close place, which happened to be TGI Friday's. Same menu as in Illinois, but about twice as expensive! (All the food is crazy expensive in Hawaii, including at the grocery store--we're talking $8 a gallon milk!) But, it filled us up and that was what mattered. We were very exhausted from our flights (and the whole non-sleeping thing the night before the flight), and went straight to bed, after ordering our taxi for 4am (!!) the following morning. Sheesh! Who planned this itinerary anyways? ;)

So all in all, the first day was not so fabulous. I did see a rainbow right after my plane landed, but that was about it for enjoying paradise so far. But it was all uphill from there, I assure you.

P.S. This picture isn't actually from this day, but I don't have any from that day, and all this boring text requires *some* visual break, so there you go.

Do you ever get so behind on something that everyday it gets to be a bigger and bigger task and you have a harder and harder time thinking about digging in and getting started because it's too daunting? Yeah, that's how I'm feeling with my blog. WAY behind. I *still* haven't written about my Hawaii trip, and now there's also Christmas and New Years and...well, you get the idea. So, I hereby give myself permission to talk about things out of order. If I don't, I may never get started because there's a lot of catching up to do. I put this token beach picture in at least, and now I will proceed to tell you some stuff that happened yesterday.

Yesterday morning I was walking in the church parking lot carrying in six grocery bags full of bagels and cream cheese for a stake young men/young women volleyball activity when suddenly I found myself biting it hard, elbow first, on the ground. In my defense, there was at least a half inch of solid ice (thank you, Illinois crazy winter full of freezing rain--how is freezing rain even possible, by the way? The temp is WAY below freezing, shouldn't it be snow? Somehow the water supercools and stays liquid--at least until it impacts and then it instantly freezes. WEIRD. Crazy stuff like that does NOT happen in New Mexico. Or Utah.) But in my, uh, non-defense, I had just watched a bunch of other people slipping around on the ice (none of them fell though) and I knew to be careful. The same bunch of people all watched my fall...and then, I felt dumb.

But, I did get a very cool bruise on my elbow from the ordeal. I tried to take a picture, but my camera is out of batteries. :(

Okay, gotta go eat dinner--you'll all have to make do with this little tidbit for a little while at least.