Blue Hawaii

This year we did something really big and crazy and went to Hawaii for our summer vacation.  It was really fun, but we are sure glad to be home.  It almost feels like a joke when we talk about the heat in Idaho being a "dry heat," but it really does make a difference.  It was frequently in the low to mid 80s, but it felt sweltering.  It just drains the energy out of you.

Right off the bat our trip started crazy - as soon as we got to our gate we saw that our flight to San Francisco was delayed by over two hours, which would cause us to miss our connection to Honolulu.  So we got rescheduled to fly though LA, but that changed our departure to about 3 in the afternoon.  In the end, that meant we landed in Honolulu at about 10:30 at night.  Getting our luggage, our rental car, some food, and drove to the house, and showered, we finally got to bed after 2:00.  Considering the time difference, that had us feeling like it was 6:00 the next morning!

A friend of Teri's who had moved to Honolulu about six months ago met us at the airport and gave us a real Hawaiian welcome, with leis and everything.  They were very cool - we had them over for a lunch barbeque that weekend, and met up with them later in the week at a big swap meet where we bought some souvenirs.  Here's Teri and I in our leis (well, I don't know if mine is actually a lei, but it's pretty cool):

We got to Hawaii so late, we couldn't really see anything, but we woke up to a beautiful view.  We decided to rent a house instead of staying in a hotel, and we're very glad we did.  We visited Waikiki once during our trip, and it was so noisy and crowded, and Honolulu is such a big city, we were glad that we had decided to stay in the country where it was quiet and beautiful.
Here's the house we stayed in, the "Mushroom House":

This was our backyard:

I made this cool panorama of the view from our backyard.  It was just beautiful:

And in front, just across the road, there was this beach:

There were coconut trees growing all over our yard, and so Ashlee decided she wanted to try and open and eat one.  I helped her get it open.  It was pretty cool:

Our house had these little geckos in it, and we saw one every now and then scurrying up the wall or across the floor.  At first, we thought it was a little weird, but we got to love them.  They're kind of cute and they eat the bugs, so that's good.  They also make the most amazing sound - a clicking/chuckling sound that sounds way too big for these little lizards.  Here's Christine holding one we found on the table.  It was in the process of molting, so its skin looks a little weird:

One of our first outings was to the Byodo-In Japanese temple.  It was really neat:

There was a huge koi pond surrounding the temple, and in one area, people were feeding them, and they were going nuts.  It was like a boiling pool of fish:

We went kayaking, but it turns out that I totally couldn't handle it.  I guess I'm terrified of the ocean.  Well, this was as far as I got before I had to go back:

Happily, the tour company let us change up and gave a refund for me and let Teri and the girls go without me, which was totally fine by me.  Here they are getting ready to head out again:

This time Christine got to be in her own kayak (in the background to the right in the picture below) while Teri and Ashlee had a tandem kayak (in the middle):

They kayaked out to this little island, and got to hang out and explore:

We went to the west side of the island so we could see the sunset.  It was beautiful:

Our visit to the Polynesian Cultural Center was really cool.  It's where we saw our first hibiscus flowers, which is the Hawaii state flower:

Here's a some pictures of our visit.  If you ever go to Oahu, I think the Polynesian Cultural Center is a must see:

We had a luau dinner at the center, and it was really awesome.  I loved the poke, which is marinated raw ahi tuna, and of course the luau pig.  Ashlee and I even tried poi, which was interesting.

We had surf lessons, which I tried to do, but couldn't.  The girls had fun, especially Christine who really took to it.  One thing though, we all got a little banged up - while there was sand on the beach, there was lava rock just under the water.  We all got scraped and cut a little, especially Christine.  She still had fun, though:

Here's some pictures of Christine catching some waves:

And a little action montage:

On our last day, we went to a beach near the house, and just hung out and had fun.  It was really nice:

Our last day we also went to this interesting buffet (that was more Japanese than I expected, but I enjoyed it) that had a little show during dinner.  The girls learned how to dance:

In the end, we had tons of fun, but were glad to be home.  It was really cool.

Whale of a Tale

So last week we went to Newport, Oregon for some fun and relaxation.  We've been there before, so this isn't one of our more adventurous summer vacations, but we decided to go someplace we were more familiar with so we could relax more and take it easy.  I often plan vacations that involve a lot of sightseeing and trying to pack a lot of things into our time, but wanted to be more laid-back this year.

We did still see and do some fun stuff, though.  And I got some pictures.  Yay!

We played a bit on the beach - the weather was probably as nice as it ever gets on the Oregon coast.
Here's Ashlee hanging out next to a big jellyfish we found washed up on the shore.  Don't touch!

We brought Aspen along on the trip, and she seemed to have fun running on the beach and meeting lots of new friends.  She's not very good around other dogs (she barks and growls) but she got a lot of practice and seems to be getting better.

Here's Aspen and the girls running through the surf.

We did have a sudden shark attack, but as you can see, I took care of it.

One of the coolest things we did was to take a whale watching trip out of Depoe Bay.  These little boats hold between 4 and 6 people, and had the ability to get us really quite close up to any whales.  However, because of their size, they also can be a bit like riding a roller coaster.  Here is a picture of one of the other boats that went out at the same time as us, so you can see what the boats were like.
Teri got a little sick, but we all had fun.

We were able to see several whales, and twice a whale breached not more than 20 feet away from the side of our boat.  It was really cool.  Here are a couple of pictures of whales that we got really close to.

The big aquarium in Newport is the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which I highly recommend visiting if you are ever there.  However, we had been there twice before, so we decided to check out a smaller place that we had not seen before, the Hatfield Marine Science Center, which is an extension of Oregon State University.  The visitors center is free to visit, though they do suggest a donation of $5 per person.  The highlight of the science center is the pacific octopus, which they feed publicly twice a week.  We showed up just in time to see it being fed, and it was pretty cool to watch.

We saw a ton of sea lions on the docks downtown when we were visiting.

In the wax museum, Christine and I found a scruffy-looking nerf-herder we recognized.

And finally, here's Sasquatch sneaking up on Teri in Ripley's Believe it or Not.

North to Alaska

For our summer vacation this year we took an Alaskan cruise.  We had been talking about doing one for a while, and the price was right for us to do it this year.  We had a lot of fun, but we are sure glad to be home.

The view of the Space Needle from our hotel room

The duck boats are old WW2 era amphibious vehicles that take you on a tour of downtown Seattle by land and sea, and the drivers are hilarious.

They were going to charge me $30 to download the full resolution version of this picture, so I just copied the thumbnail

Captain Tuck'n'Roll

On the duck boat

On the duck boat

The duck boat in the water

In Seattle, we visited the EMP Museum, which included displays on science fiction and fantasy.  They had Captain Kirk's original chair, costumes from the Princess Bride, and the Terminator's skull, among other stuff.  It was small, but pretty cool.
 

Captain Kirk's chair

Maybe if I suck in my stomach a little, I can fit in Christopher Reeve's costume

We set sail from Seattle, spent one day at sea, and then visited the Tracy Arm Fjord, Skagway Alaska, Juneau Alaska, Ketchikan Alaska, and Victoria British Columbia in Canada before coming back to Seattle.

Mount Rainier from the Seattle port

Our cabin on the Miracle (the wide angle makes it look bigger than it was)

The view from the deck of our cabin - out at open sea

Sailing into the Tracy Arm Fjord

Looking back along the ship in the Tracy Arm Fjord

The Sawyer Glacier - a literal river of ice

A sea lion and her cub watch us sail past

Panning for gold

Eureka!

Panning for gold

Juneau is the capital of Alaska, but it's really tiny.  Also, you can't get there by land!

Christine demonstrates her favorite part of Juneau - cell phone access so she can text

Picturesque mountain streams in Juneau

A wall-like mountain range on the coast of Alaska

This little towel man was made by the cleaning staff

Christine made this little towel elephant.  I called him a towlephant!

A whale tail!  We saw a lot of action from whales off the side of the ship, but it was really hard to catch anything with the camera.  I have hundreds of pictures of open ocean with a little splash in the middle.

Spouts from breaching humpback whales

Welcome to Canada!

A photo opportunity in Canada.