March 7, 2018
First concerning Norman’s mother. After her bought with severe pneumonia she
has recovered enough to move back to her apartment in a senior citizens housing
project.
We have also posted a compilation of winter projects on
Salish Aire at:
http://ncgregory.larper.com/Chapter-Pages/Winter%20projects%202016-17.pdf
.
I wanted to make sure to include a photo of a weekend outing
to the buoy in front of the Allan Point Forest Service Cabin. We had a great
time with Jarvis exploring the island, the cabin, and the beach and then awoke
the next morning to snow.
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| Allan Point Forest Service Cabin |
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| Clarice and Jarvis exploring the beach |
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| Sunrise on the buoy |
Today we are on our way back home after visiting the Big
Island of Hawaii. We wanted to take a
break to a warm climate and since we hadn’t been to the Big Island for over 30
years we decided to go back there. For housing we rented a vacation rental in
Hilo on the (very) wet side of the island.
This might seem strange when our goal was to get warm but we really
enjoy tropical rain forests and I wanted to revisit the active volcano.
The area around Hilo is an incredibly lush tropical rain
forest .
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| A Hilo area beach |
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| There are a number of warm pools in the Hilo - Puna area as the rainwater percolates through volcanicaly heated rocks. |
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| Waterfalls abound in the Hilo area |
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| A Hilo area bay |
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| Walking through the botanical gardens |
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| Banyan tree in the botanical gardens |
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| Akaka Falls State Park |
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| Rainbow falls from the ground |
I was excited that unlike last time we were on the island
the volcano was actively erupting so I was able to check “walk up close to an
active lava flow” off of my personal bucket list. I started out with a helicopter trip over macadamia plantations, waterfalls, and lava flows.
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| Our chariot |
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| The pilot |
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| Muana Loa macadamia nut plantation |
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| Series of waterfalls from the air |
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| Rainbow falls from the air |
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| Main source of the lava from the air |
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| Looking from the lower lava fields up towards the caldera |
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| Where lava recently entered the ocean |
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| National Park Service instructions; "leave the road at this point and walk towards the red glow in the distance" |
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| Silver at my feet was still hot enough that it felt like standing near a hot barbecue grill, the red blob in the middle was the newest rock on the surface of the planet just being "born" |
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| The tongue of this lava falls moved down the hill a considerable distance while I watched, the rock between me and it was too hot and fresh (read "brittle") for me to feel comfortable walking any closer. |
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| Patterns and types of lava within a few feet (walking over the brown chunky lava was quite the challenge). |
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| This lava looked like someone had thrown spools of wire on the ground and then covered them with mud. |
Clarice and I both were eager to enjoy warm beaches which we
found in abundance when we drove back to the Kona side of the island. We weren't able to SCUBA dive because of the issue of driving from one side of the island to the other required climbing to an elevation that was considered as dangerous after diving. We did enjoy snorkeling.
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| This turtle swam up and when I started to take his photo he swam towards me and then continued to stay about a yard away while he caught his breath before swimming back to the bottom. |
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| A message from the locals |
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| Fish on the reef |
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| We saw many schools of these yellow fish |
A nice surprise was that our daughter and her husband were
on a business trip to Seattle from their home in Ontario Canada and decided to
come and visit us in Sitka.
Timing
worked out so that they actually met us in Seattle and joined us on the final
leg of our trip back home. In the three days we have been here it has snowed, rained, been sunny and warm, and hailed (sometimes more than one thing at once depending on which way you look).
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| Erin and Paul |
