Our first full day on the island started us off with figuring out what to do and where to go to do it. After waking up at 6:30am HST we didn’t leave the room till around 8:00am. We got a late start obviously. Then we drove to downtown Kona and drove around in circles looking for a hole in the wall bakery for breakfast. Wasn’t great, wasn’t terrible but no one ate much. Then we had to find a Starbucks for that hometown coffee with soy. By now it’s 9:00am and we don’t have any snorkel gear.
Where’s the Snorkel Bob’s? Thankfully not too far but after spending close to an hour in there it was too late to drive anywhere to far. So, we decided to make two more stops: one for cold drinks and the other for a beach umbrella and mats.
Now it’s 10:30am and we’ve found our first destination, Kahalu’u Beach Park in downtown Kona. This is a very popular beach with locals and tourists and since we got here kind of late, the water wasn’t very clear due to too many people in the water. However, all was not lost as we all saw multiple turtles! Even with average snorkeling the sight of turtles makes any spot awesome.
After exiting the water, Daddy thought it might be a good idea to get closer to nature and crash onto the lava rocks. I was down for quite a while as I needed to make sure I didn’t break anything. I even got some assistance from a lifeguard. At this point I’m feeling better but my right side of my body took a good beating from toe to right arm. After the fact we noticed a sign that stated that the rocks are slippery… perhaps I should have read that first?
Tonight we ate dinner at the Crystal Blue lounge within the hotel. Much better than the bar & grill at pool side. Nice selection of pupus and drinks. Kids enjoyed it as well and Aiden ate all his dinner for the first time on the trip. Hooray! We’re hitting the hay a bit early tonight as we have a snorkel cruise to Captain Cook’s Monument in the morning. Should be fun!
Today was our travel day to The Big Island. The plane flights were pretty uneventful, thank goodness. Just a long day as we left for the Portland airport at 7:30am and arrived at our hotel at 6:45pm PST (3:45pm HST). That’s almost 12 hours of traveling. Not really fun. But hey, a small price to pay for visiting paradise.
The kids wanted to hit the pool the moment we arrived and hit it they did. The Sheraton Keauhou has a massive 200 foot waterslide called the “Manta Ray” (due to the nightly Manta Ray’s that feed off their shoreline). Now what kid or adult isn’t going to have fun with the slide? We all went down it multiple times and it was great fun. I’m fairly certain that we’ll be sliding down that again before our time is up here.
We then figured it was time to eat some real food since we hadn’t really ate anything since we left our house. Airplane food doesn’t really count since no one actually had more than a few bites. Absolutely nasty. The hotel’s bar and grill is ok, nothing fancy. The onion rings hit the spot plus the local Kona Brewing Company beer was top notch after a long day.
Uploading photos and videos is going to be a big pain. While the download speeds on the hotel’s network are nice and fast (usually), their upload rates are capped at 4kbps. If you’re lucky it will actually upload continuously but I’ve not had that happen often. I uploaded a bunch of pictures to Flickr and it took a LONG TIME. I also uploaded a video to Viddler, which took over 15 minutes for a 3mb file…
We’ve been planning on going on vacation for the last two months. Even went so far as to schedule it at work and with AJ’s preschool. However, up until Sunday night we had no idea where we were going.
At first we were looking at visiting some local sites like the Oregon coast or downtown Seattle. After looking up the prices for nice hotels in either location it became clear that the cost of visiting both places was as much as flying somewhere.
Where would you like to fly today? Maui? Kauai? The Big Island? After much deliberation and angst we decided upon Hawai’i, on the Kona coast.
The allure of being able to snorkel again was to great to pass up. In order to “upgrade” our snorkel experience I purchased a Canon G7 with underwater housing. Look for frequent photo and movie postings just like last time when we were in Kauai.
Two weeks ago we got our Andersen 400 Series Frenchwood Sliding Glass Door installed. After four months, the cardboard door is gone. Now we have to finish and stain it. Ugh.
More pictures of the carnage on Flickr.
I’m still here, let’s get that out of the way. Been really busy with work, life, and gaming. Sadly in that order. Lots of work lately.
Sliding glass door it still broken and the issues we’ve gone through to get it have been so horrible that it takes too much energy to actually type it all up.
Someday… we’ll have something other than cardboard to brighten up the kitchen.
I’ve seemed to have lost the blog bug and now I’m bogged down whenever I try to write something. It’s not like I’ve lost touch with the “inkernet” or anything, I actually post photos to flickr quite often and I’m plugged into the internet everyday for work.
I use to write to about a variety of different things here because it was new and exciting stuff to me. Ever since we moved away from the “big city”, life has slowed down for us and I’m not as active in the new and exciting technology scene now days.
Life here in the Northwest has been a lot different for me since we started this journey 10 months ago. I no longer have to commute to my job; I walk down the hall about 50 feet to my office in my new home. I get to see my wife and kids a lot more now, being able to see them right after work stops is a great perk as well. The kids can play outside without fear of being run over by speeding cars. We have a dog. We have a backyard. It’s colder here, much colder. And yes, it’s wet a lot.
Much of this leads to me not having the drive to post on the blog frequently. I’m too busy after to work with the family or playing basketball at the local gym which is less than a mile from our house. Blogging for me use to be about cool technology and new games. I think now I’m going to focus more on my photography, family life, and hopefully more leisure travel. I hope that I’ll be able to post more frequently and not feel as though I have to write about tech or new/exciting things.
Things are starting to happen around here, haven’t you noticed? I’m working on a sort of redesign. Haven’t yet decided on the layout but I am working on the integration side of the house.
As you know, we bought a house in Washington, picking up our lives and moving from California a couple of months ago. Much to our delight and surprise it snowed during our first week here! We’re looking forward to winter… strange I know.
So far the area has been great and the neighbors are wonderful. We’ve joined the local gym and have been going regularly much to the dismay of our oldest. She isn’t quite at the age where she can stay home alone so we drag her along. AJ doesn’t have a problem going because they have a wonderful day care center there. He gets to interact with other kids outside of the house and away from his preschool.
Oh! AJ started preschool… We were quite nervous about this at first, sending our youngest child off to a school we didn’t know much about. But after the first day we knew it was the right choice. AJ loves school and the teachers are very active and involved in early development. AJ comes home exhausted from only 4 hours there twice a week due to all the excitement and activities.
Autumn is slowly adjusting to being dropped into a new school mid-year. She has done really well and has made some new friends already. Even though she moans and groans about going to the gym, she actually has fun meeting new kids and climbing on their rock wall while I play basketball.
Yes, I’m still here. I even moved the blog from my personal web server to a new host. Did you even notice? I’m sure something broke.
I’ve been busy with the following: working, flying back and forth, buying a house, flying back and forth, working, buying a house, packing my games, playing my Xbox 360, and working. As you can see, I’ve been very busy. I hope to have a more refined post available early next month after we move and finish unpacking what we’ve been packing for the last month.
Did I mention we bought our first house and that we’re moving? Discuss.
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Our first full day on the island started us off with figuring out what to do and where to go to do it. After waking up at 6:30am HST we didn’t leave the room till around 8:00am. We got a late start obviously. Then we drove to downtown Kona and drove around in circles looking for a hole in the wall bakery for breakfast. Wasn’t great, wasn’t terrible but no one ate much. Then we had to find a Starbucks for that hometown coffee with soy. By now it’s 9:00am and we don’t have any snorkel gear.
Now it’s 10:30am and we’ve found our first destination, Kahalu’u Beach Park in downtown Kona. This is a very popular beach with locals and tourists and since we got here kind of late, the water wasn’t very clear due to too many people in the water. However, all was not lost as we all saw multiple turtles! Even with average snorkeling the sight of turtles makes any spot awesome.
After exiting the water, Daddy thought it might be a good idea to get closer to nature and crash onto the lava rocks. I was down for quite a while as I needed to make sure I didn’t break anything. I even got some assistance from a lifeguard. At this point I’m feeling better but my right side of my body took a good beating from toe to right arm. After the fact we noticed a sign that stated that the rocks are slippery… perhaps I should have read that first?
I’m sure something broke.
