**Update: New video added to day 5.

I'm back! After the rainy luau we had Friday night, we decided to leave Saturday unplanned. We didn't do much except relax and be lazy. Sunday consisted of church, which was crazy because the preacher and his wife went to LCU and we met 4 or 5 other people who were Texas transplants (which is a lot considering the church had about 20 people), and in the visitor book just a few lines up one of the ministers from our church in Lubbock had signed his name. Small world.

We also went to Hapuna Beach on Sunday, which was our second visit. It is a great beach and I hope we can go again before we leave. I didn't take pictures though because I didn't bring my camera. They warn tourists about leaving valuables in the car (or with your stuff on the beach) at these places, and I would be soooo sad if my camera got stolen.

Yesterday we got a 4WD vehicle and visited Mauna Kea, which is the world's tallest mountain from its underwater base. I was feeling the altitude change as soon as we got to the top. Its actual height is something like 14,000 feet, and it is supposedly the best place in the world to look at stars. There are observatories all over the top of it. It was SO awesome!
The landscape at the top was like another planet. So barren, and we were just towering over the highest clouds in the atmosphere.
Take me to your people. These are what the observatories on top look like. They are some pretty weird buildings.
Chad and me on the summit. Special thanks to Dave, the guy who rode to the top with us, who took this picture. Interesting guy--he owns a backcountry ski touring company in Vancouver, and he had joined a sailing expedition from Vancouver to San Fran, then to Hawaii, then back to the mainland. It had taken them 23 days to sail to Hawaii. He was just stopped over for a couple days in Hawaii before they went back. Anyway, he didn't have a 4WD vehicle which the road to the top requires, so we gave him a ride from the visitor's center.
This was cool...a lake at the top of Mauna Kea fed entirely by permafrost. Supposedly the largest lake of its kind.
Just another view...I think this one is from the car on the ride up.
Later yesterday we revisited the luau, and this time it was dry for us. I got this picture of the sun setting and also the video at the bottom of the post. Today we drove to Volcanoes National Park and hiked the Kilauea Iki crater trail. It was a really great hike. It started off in the rainforest and we got to hike IN the crater, with steam vents all around us. It was a surreal landscape. I tried to get some pictures but it was really misty and windy and the lens of my camera kept getting little drops all over it, so these will have to do. Here's Chad walking at the beginning in the rainforest.The plant life was amazing. Ferns and other plants everywhere, but most of them have Hawaiian names so I can't remember what they are.Okay, this is a view of the bottom of the crater from the trail we were on, which was much higher and I guess you can't really tell that from the picture. That plume is steam from a crater vent. Pretty cool huh?At the bottom of the crater.More lava.The plants still figure out a way to grow. Enjoy!

Day 6

Hi. These photos are out of order because I don't feel like putting them in order. We are still having fun. I forgot that I hadn't shown you where we are staying yet. Here's a picture of the pool and what's on the other side of the pool. It's not exactly where we sleep, but we have been spending a lot of time here.
Here's a view of our hotel from the pool.
Here we are right after we arrived in Hawaii.
Here we are at a real Hawaiian luau. Funny story...it started raining really hard right after we finished eating, and they had to cancel the rest of the luau. But, we got to see them bring the pig out of the ground (see photo below), we got to go through the buffet (not for the picky eater), and we got to see the dancers perform one dance. They gave us a raincheck but I'm afraid we might be booked for the other nights they had available. Oh well. It was a fun and very wet experience. This was before the rain.

These are apple bananas. They are the size of a person's palm. I've heard they're delicious. Got them at an outside market yesterday.
Here they are getting the pig out of the imu (underground oven) at the luau.

Here's our kitchen.
Here's our view from our living room.

A beautiful sunset at the luau. After one fairly heavy rain, but before a very heavy one.
These are the crabs that hang out on the rocks outside our hotel.
The avocados here are HUGE. Like, the size of canteloupes. So when we were at the market yesterday, I was trying to find some avocados that were fairly ripe, which were the smaller ones. The guy saw that I was looking at the smaller ones and gave me a bag, filled it with avocados and told me to just take them, that he wouldn't sell them to me. So now we will be having avocados every day until we leave which is fine. Anyway, I took two limes and gave him $3, and we called it a deal.
Here we are again at the luau.
Again, at the luau, next to the dead roasting pig.

So that was the end of day 6...and over the weekend we don't have a whole lot going on, so there may not be as many pictures. But next week we are going to Volcanos Nat'l Park, going on a hike or two, going parasailing, and on a sunset cruise so it will pick up again in a couple days. For now, it's time to relax by the pool with a book. Have a great weekend everyone.

Day 5

Me again. These pictures are from our helicopter ride yesterday along the Kohala Coast which is just north of where we're staying. Riding the helicopter was the most expensive thing we'll do while we're in Hawaii, but totally worth it. It was awesome!This is the helicopter we rode in. Our pilot was SO Andy Bernard from "The Office."Feigning a smile as we are about to lift off.Poor Chad was so afraid, he almost backed out and got off right then. Can you see the fear on his face? Gotta love the photo quality taking pictures in a moving vehicle through a window.

Does anyone know how to rotate video? I was an idiot and took a couple videos vertically. Why did I do that? I have two more videos to upload but don't feel like doing it right now. So look for those later if you're interested. And sorry about your neck on this one.

Days 3 & 4

Hey guys, thanks for the recent comments. It makes me feel better knowing that some people are still reading the blog and looking at the pictures I'm posting. I'm trying to do this in chronological order, so let me start with yesterday. As I mentioned in the last post, we went snorkeling. We went out on this boat with a guide company, and it was totally worth it. There's nothing like seeing the shoreline from a little boat off-shore, and then having that little boat take you to, in their opinion, the best places to snorkel on the island. We had a lot of fun snorkeling yesterday, but I am actually kind of sore today. I don't think I'm supposed to be. Sad. Notice in this first one how I strategically cropped it to get lots of the shoreline and none of us in our swimsuits. This was at our first snorkeling stop, right before we got in the water. Erin, I was thinking about using this dorky tourist picture for our new profile picture for the blog. What do you think?Can you even tell what this is? And why is my typing blue and underlined? I did not authorize that. Anyway, it's a sea turtle! It was right by our boat and so cute. These are the results of a sea turtle picture taken with an underwater digital camera. Sorry, I tried. And sorry about the underlining. That's really annoying but I can't figure out how to change it. I think this was the best shot of fish I got from underwater. This was at the second snorkeling stop. It was so beautiful. Another cool thing that this excursion company did was take us by a bunch of lava tubes and caves. In the middle of the photo there is an opening in the rock that the water was sloshing through. On this day the water looked so fake blue it was hard to believe. Day 4: Here's Chad looking cool by the convertible. Whew, my writing is normal again. Today we drove about halfway around the island to a city called Hilo. Along the way we stopped by a couple waterfalls and on the north part of the island are these beautiful rolling green pastures in what is known as the Kohala area, with a little town called Waimea. The picture below was at a scenic stop on the side of the highway. This is the first waterfall we stopped at, called Akaka Falls. I was wearing my A&M shirt today and on the way to the falls a guy said "howdy" to me. Also, there were three other people on the plane from LA to Hawaii with A&M shirts on. Small world.
In front of Akaka Falls.After Akaka Falls, we stopped at this little roadside farm. They were selling coconuts, beets, lychees (never had those before, but they were yummy), tomatoes (yes we bought some and yes we ate them tonight because they were organic and grown in Hawaii), and papayas. Being a dorky tourist again. The lady at the farm said they had just put this thing up and I was the first person she had seen use it.
Paul and Chad are chowing down on the coconut the guy cracked open for us. It wasn't my favorite, but if I was starving I wouldn't turn it down. Okay, the next stop was Rainbow falls. Check out this tree. That is Paul standing at the base of it. Just like my grandmother always said, it's real dangerous.
Rainbow Falls. Ironically, there was no rainbow at these falls, but there was one at Akaka Falls. I guess we were just at those at the right time of day.
Chad took this photo on our other camera on the first full day we were here. Tomorrow (day 5) is our helicopter ride, so look for pictures from that in the next couple days. Thanks again for looking at our pictures.