archely's Trip to Hawaii - May 2003

[sir archely]

Well, i just set up the scanner, and i figure since i hounded malcor about yellowstone pics, i should probably put up some pics from my trip to hawaii as well. I'm not sure what order they'll be in, since i don't really take pictures, it's all my parents or sister, so...~shrug~ Anyway, i get doubles. :D

Furthermore, my parents took 9 rolls of film, plus whatever my sister took, so this isn't a complete vision here, it's just some of the ones i happen to like more. In addition, i won't be putting up any of the ones with myself or my family in them. first, i don't think it's right for me to decide for my family, second, i'm deciding that i'd rather have those pics be on a private page. So nyah.

Also, as i scan these pics, they turn out to be about 1.5 MB each, far too large for posting. As such, quality and size sacrifices have been made to get them up here at all.

One last caveat...i'm lazy, and it takes a bit to scan the pic and then edit it to fit. So...it'll probably be over a period of time when i do this, not all at once.

hope you enjoy. i did. :D

[sir archely]

Well, our flight left at 7 in the morning or so. My father being the way he is, it meant we had to leave our house at about 4 am. We flew from Milwaukee to Chicago, then to Denver, then to Honolulu. ~sigh~ Very long.

However, one of the biggest highlights of the trip was on the flight from Denver to Honolulu. It's about a 9 hour flight, i think. Anyway, on the way there, they play this game with everyone on board. Just to keep it in mind here, we were aboard a big big plane. I think around 350 people on board was what we were told. Anyway, the game is called "halfway to hawaii."

Partway into the trip, the captain comes on the intercom thingy, and gives you info like airspeed for the first half of the trip, estimated air speed for the second half, wind speeds for both, and the total distance of the trip. What you have to do is guess the exact time (in hawaiian time) the plane will cross the exact geographical middle of the journey. To the second. Something like 1500 miles i think. My sister and i sat there and tried to figure it out, and then they came around and collected the little slips of paper.

A while later they come on to announce the winner. Turns out i was only off by 2 seconds. However, the catch was that i tied with some other guy, which had apparently never happened before. So...they decided they'd do a contest. We each had to go up in front with the flight attendants, get on the intercom, and sing a song karaoke style to the 350 some people on board. We ended up singing with a back up chorus of 5 flight attendants. I sang "you've lost that loving feeling" and the other guy (who sounded german and said that he had lived in hawaii for a couple years) sang the first few lines of the star spangled banner, which they wrote down for him. Heh, probably the biggest crowd i'll ever sing for. ;) Actually, make that certainly the biggest crowd. I ended up winning a bottle of champagne, and they gave the other guy a bottle of wine. (great prize for me, considering i don't drink...) Very exciting plane ride, if you ask me. :D

We arrived in hawaii and got lei'ed, then went to our hotel to sign in and get our luggage up to our room...on the 24 floor. My sister and i had a nice view of Waikiki beach from our room. That night we just took it easy, had some Thai food and walked around waikiki.

[sir archely]

I meant to put this with the last post. It's a pic of a flower at the airport in honolulu.

[sir archely]

This is from the first night. Look closely and you'll see the torches that they have lit all up and down the street at night. Oh, and i think that's possibly my shoulder in the pic. ;)

[sir archely]

The next morning we went over to Pearl Harbor, and looked around the museum they have there. Then we took the little ferry out to the Arizona Memorial thing. The whole area is really subdued.

[sir archely]

That afternoon we took a city bus that went almost all the way around the island. It was sort of our own little tour in a way, since we were the only ones weird enough to actually ride the whole line. It took us along the east coast of Oahu for a long time, which was absolutely beautiful. Then we went on the north shore, stopped for some great "shave ice" (it's everywhere, and in amazing flavors). After that we cut down through the middle of the island through pineapple plantations. We stopped at the dole plantation. Here's a pic of how pineapples grow...i was amazed that nobody else in my family ever was curious to look it up. I would imagine many people here don't know either so...

[sir archely]

On monday we flew to Kona, on the big island. This is at a luau we went to that night. And wow, to the women moving their hips. You have to see it to believe how fast they go. Wow.

[sir archely]

Here's a little gecko. These guys were everywhere. I think this one's at a fruit stand just south of Kona we went to a few times. The fruit is so good. Mmmmmm. I had at least 5 different things i've never had before. I don't even remember what they were all called. One was guanabana or something like that. A weird heart shaped green spiny thing bigger than a grapefruit. It tasted like a cross between a lime and pineapple.

[sir archely]

oops, have to go back a bit, here's another pic from near the entrance to the dole plantation thingy. just a cool tree. :D

[sir archely]

The next day we decided to head south of Kona, and go around the southern end of the island to see the black beach Punalu'u. At least i think that's how you spell it. Our guide book said it was good for a bit of snorkeling, and had lots of turtles, but when we got there, it was pretty cold. Still, we did see 5 or 6 turtles, and that was just the ones that were either on the beach, or near the surface where we could see. Being a black beach was really a bizarre experience. I'd never been on one before, and just looking at the sand was fun. It's really strange, looks like it should be dirt, soil, but then it's sand. Cool. :D

Here's a pic of a turtle that's beached himself. Don't worry, they do it on purpose, and then head back out into the ocean just fine. The other is a pic of a turtle that was hanging around shore the whole time we were there, feeding.

[sir archely]

I wanted to say that people should feel free to make comments about them if they want.

[sir archely]

Here's a couple more pics from the black sand beach. I liked it a lot. :D First is just a general shot of the beach, it's not the whole thing, but it's a nice pic. Second is just me playing around in the sand.

[sir archely]

After the black sand beach we headed back around the southern tip of the island to Kona. On our way we stopped at a really nice beach that i forget the name of and went snorkeling for a while. This was my first time, well, i'd messed around snorkeling in lakes and stuff, but it didn't compare to the ocean and coral. It was simply amazing. Fish were everywhere, literally. Big, little, colorful, all shapes and sizes....incredible. You can't look around without seeing some. The coral is beautiful as well, and urchins are all over the place.

The only disappointing thing is that my parents didn't get their pics developed on the island. The book we had recommended this, and i have to say it would have been a much better idea. The underwater pics especially suffered because the people back home didn't understand the contrasts and colors and things. Mostly they just turned out variations of blue. To see what i saw, you really have to go there and get in the water. The pics are FAR FAR away from doing it justice.

Here's the best shot of a turtle that turned out, and another of the state fish of hawaii, the humuhumu-nukunuku-a-pua’a. If you find some good pic online of the fish, you can see how my pics are lacking.

[sir archely]

i also wanted to add that if anyone wants to use one or more of these pictures, for whatever reason, feel free.

[sir archely]

Here's another place we went snorkeling. It's called honaunau and it's a state (i think) park. There was a little walking tour thing through the park that showed some about hawaiian culture and life before Cook came. There were replica buildings and the like. Nice picnic area too, but we had to go just outside the park for the snorkeling. The one pic is coral, and again, it's weird, because it doesn't look like it's underwater at all, but i assure you, it is. The last underwater pic might be hard to see, but in the middle the long thing is an eel.

If something bites your hand,
and you're bleeding in the sand,
that's a mor-ay.

[sir archely]

Another day we went around the north side of the island to the other major town, Hilo. There wasn't much actually in Hilo, but the east side of the island is the more tropical side. We visited a couple different falls in the area, Akaka falls and rainbow falls. South of there is a tiny little park called lava tree park that we stopped at. It was just lava formations that happen when flowing lava hits a tree that has a ton of cool water on it. Anyway, i'll get to that. Here are some pics of Akaka Falls.

[sir archely]

To get to akaka falls we had to go on a little walk just to get to it. even the walk was interesting and fun. The best part was perhaps the bamboo. Really cool. That's my back in the one pic. Also, the little tiny falls everywhere off to the side of the trail were great. Sort of mysterious and magical to me.

[sir archely]

Also, in that area there were flowers and things everywhere. Here's a pic of a flowering banana tree, you can see the little baby bananas at the bottom of the pic. It turned out a little too bright, but that's okay. Also, some...er....red...flower that's cool. In addition, near akaka falls is rainbow falls, which we also visited.

[sir archely]

Here are some pics of lava tree park. I decided it wouldn't hurt to post up a blurry far away pic of myself. ;) Those big trees in the pics are apparently called monkeypod trees.....we think. Anyway, we never did figure out what a monkeypod was so maybe i'll have to look that up. They were really big, that one in the second pic is next to the building that was in the park, and i'd say it goes up 6 stories or more, and it probably wasn't the biggest. Anyway, the park was cool mostly because we had it completely to ourselves. It took us about 20 minutes or so to do the entire walk, but it was so peaceful and....contented. or something like that.

[sir archely]

Here's a pic of a little fern that was just budding while we were walking through. Actually, these buds were everywhere, in various stages of expanding. Those little yellow parts are actually what folds out to become the leaves you see in the pic. Also, this second pic is maybe my favorite of all of them. While driving around the area of lava tree park, these trees lined the road, and arched over it. It was a pretty empty area, so not many other cars. One of the best parts was just driving down it, it was like something out of a fairytale, really nice.

[sir archely]

oh, one more thing. heh. hopefully. anyway, if anyone really likes a certain pic, i'd be more than happy to send you the actual full sized version. ALL of these have been scaled down or cropped in some fashion just to get them up on the page. The full ones are nice. :D Just PM me or something and we can work out a method of transfer.

[sir archely]

Well, here's the hotel i was staying at in Kona. Royal something-or-other. Nice place, but there were a few beefs with it. Namely, we didn't get the rooms they had told us we were getting, but it ended up okay anyway, since i think we were upgraded or something. The first is of the lobby, yeah, that's the lobby. In hawaii everything is open, we saw schools, and they don't have hallways, the classrooms just open to the outside. It's really cool, because it's always nice. The next one is actually of our hotel, the tan thing. The last is a view from the hotel, pretty much looking back to where the pic of the hotel was taken.

[sir archely]

Here's a nice sign, i'm glad i didn't get hit. Signs like his make you nervous to hang out under the trees, but that's exactly what i'm doing in the second pic, flat on my back on the beach, looking up at the tree i'm under. ;) The last pic is a beach we went to, i forget the name of it, but it's consistently named the best beach in the united states. The pic doesn't come near to doing it justice, what you're seeing is probably less than a quarter of the beach, but it was beautiful.

[sir archely]

One of the days down there we went to Volcano Nat'l Park. Very cool, definitely a good place to visit. Only thing was that we just missed a big lava flow that happened in March of this year. There was little to no activity while we were down there, and my sister and i, sans parents, hiked for about an hour and a half over this hot, black, uneven lava (really more like bouldering than hiking) just to see the steam that was coming up on the coast from where the lava was entering the ocean underwater. ~shrug~ It was kinda cool to know that we were witnessing the birth of land though, even if we weren't actually seeing it. Anyway, this lava flow in march wiped out the road, which is why we had to hike over it. It flowed right past the street signs, which were still there making sure none of us parked or went faster than 25 mph. ;)

[sir archely]

While in volcano my family did a hike around and across a crater or something. Again, i can't remember the name of it. It was fun though, nice hike. In the pic of the actual crater, the white line is the path we walked, the funny part was, there was no white line when you were actually down there. No way to tell if you were on the path, except by the piles of rocks left by park rangers.

[sir archely]

Here's not the crater we walked through, but a different one. Panormic view on that, not sure how it'll be up here. The flower in that pic is a hawaiian offering. You'll see them occasionally in different places around the island. The actual flower pic is just some random flower i thought was neat. :D

[sir archely]

Here's the last of volcano pics. These are taken down by where the lava had flowed over the road, and this is the shore near the newly forming land. You weren't allowed to stand too close to the edge in most places, since it was so unstable and could fall in the ocean at any time. This was one place that they allowed it. The wind was crazy here. After looking at the pics, i realized that there is really no frame of reference. Anyway, those cliffs are probably around 60' high in most places, and the arch is probably just a little bit under that.

[sir archely]

Well, here are my final pics from Hawaii. Well, not my final pics, but yours. ;) The first is from a place called Kole Kole Beach Park. Pretty empty little park on the eastern side of the big island, the waves rush in through a little inlet, and one could sit for hours just listening to the crashes of the waves....And last, as all slide shows must end...sunset over Kona.