Sulphur Dioxide and Sea Urchins Aren't Your Friends

     The Big Island, Hawaii.  First thing to know- it's not called the Big Island for nothing.  While we typically drive around Oahu a few times on a trip there, the Big Island is a different story.  It takes almost 3 hours to get from Kona to Volcano National Park and the road isn't along the coast, it's 2000 feet up the hillside.  However the drive is amazing.  It starts with Kona.  A lovely hillside town known for it's coffee.  If you're a coffee drinker the drive itself will be an amazing experience.  The entire town is covered in the scent of roasted coffee.  In December, poinsettias bloom in huge abundance along the road, along with the everpresent bougainvillea.  It's an experience for the senses.  The most remarkable thing about the Big Island is it's newness.  There are lava flows everywhere that haven't had time to regenerate much growth.  The starkness of the landscape is in sharp contrast to the lushness of the rainforests immediately ajacent. 
      We are always on the lookout for inexpensive lodging.  This time we stayed in cabins at the National Park.  It's 4000 feet elevation so the days were a nice 70 degrees but the nights were cold.  The cabins are operated by Volcano house and at the time of this writing are $55 a night.  They provide bed linens, towels, and a bar of soap.  You get a cabin with one double bed and a bunkbed set and access to warm showers.  They recommended bringing your own sleeping bag or additional blanket.  That's a necessity.  We would have frozen without our warm sleeping bags.
     There is nothing quite like watching lava flow into the ocean.  The vantage point outside the park gets you a peek but you're still pretty far away.  If I had the money I'd take one of the boat rides out there that get you a much better view.  It was still a fun experience walking along lava flows at night with a flashlight and a ton of other people.  In fact it was the only time on the trip that we were with a lot of people.  Early December in the park is remarkably quiet.
     After spending the day hiking volcanoes, crawling through lava tube (that's a must do), and seeing petroglyphs we were on the lookout for a beach.  I envisioned black sand beach extending for miles in both directions.  Instead we discovered a place unvisited by tourists but such a serendipitous find that I didn't care about the black sand.  The shoreline was rocky but we couldn't resist stepping into the water anyway.  What we found was water in the high 80s.  Water seeps from a hotspring through the ground and into the ocean.  It was a delightful experience to sit in the water and have the warm water from the spring wash under you and the cool water from the ocean wash over you.  We also found a delightful natural hot spring pool to relax in.  We shared it with a local mom and 4 little girls who chatted the entire time.  Lesson learned: don't sit still very long.  The shrimp like to pinch.  I was goosed a few times by little red shrimp.  The beach was called Isaac Hale beach.
     The day we left Hawaii the winds turned and we drove through clouds of sulphur dioxide gas from Kilaeu.  Sulphur Dioxide smells like a burning match.  It burns your throat and makes you cough.  We were glad to have caught the park the day before when the pollution levels were much better.
     On the way out we decided to catch one last hour at the beach.  We found a beach near the airport.  Drex quickly walked in and before we had the chance to get in ourselves he came walking back out- saying, "Something got me."  In his heel he had 2 inch long mini-spikes sticking out.  I tried to pull them out but they just broke off.  Not know what it was, we had no idea the seriousness of the situation.  I was envisioning us getting on the plane and Drex's foot swelling up like a basketball or the creature to be something venemous and him getting violently ill on the plane ride home.  We were lucky enough to find some local surfers who told us that it was a sea urchin and that it wasn't anything to worry about.  We found a security gaurd who had a first aid kit for sea urchins.  So here is the first aid for sea urchin stings.  Don't remove the spikes.  They're just calcium and will dissolve in the skin in a few days or weeks.  Put vinegar or a lime on the spikes for as long as you can to help dissolve the calcium and check to make sure it doesn't get infected.  By the next morning Drex was ok and riding his bike.
     Sulphur dioxide, sea urchins, and really cold nights aside, The Big Island was one really remarkable trip.

We're at it again

We repeated the experiment for another summer, which I didn't blog about. We had another great summer with United and traveled to Washington DC to see the National Art Gallery, Yellowstone, Eureka to hike deep into Redwoods National Park, Santa Barbara to bike on the beach, Seattle to go to the Space Needle and the interactive music museum, Monterey to kayak with sea otters in the bay. We also traveled to New York, Boston, Ireland, England and Italy, but that was on our dime, not United's.
So now we're off on a new adventure. Andy got hired on permanently with Skywest Airlines. Now we can travel where we want to and when we want so the pace isn't as crazy. We're not trying to cram a trip in every week like we did the past two summers. Andy's been at Skywest for almost 2 months and we've taken two trips to Hawaii. That is a more sustainable rate of travel. So here's to a new adventure- a little less hectic and longer duration.

A Snowball's Chance

It took two months but we finally had our first REAL challenge getting everyone home from our adventure. We should have suspected such on Friday of a 3 day holiday weekend.

We knew we were in trouble when we checked in at the Eugene, Oregon airport. 2 out of our 3 flights home were written in screaming red. Let me define what the airline is telling us with the colors. Green means you've got half a chance to get on this flight. Orange means that if you like to gamble you might have a chance of making it but don't bet the farm. Red mean we overbooked and there's a snowball's chance in Hades that you're going to make it.

Over the past few weeks we've had good success gambling with orange. I got a bit over confident with orange. But when it came up red I knew it wasn't a good sign.

This trip home was Eugene to San Francisco, San Francisco to LAX, LAX to San Diego or Carlsbad (whichever was available). We made it out of Eugene easily- then the fun began.

At the San Francisco airport they have screens at each gate that list the standby passengers and the number of seats still available on the plane. We were numbers 13-17 with 23 seats when we arrived. Five minutes later we we still 13-17 with 13 seats left. It went downhill from there. Miraculously (because someone on the list didn't show up) they had two spaces. We had decided in advance that if we ever had to separate, Andy would go first with one child and I'd come on a later flight. This whole idea sounded to my chivalrous husband as an almost blasphemous idea since he prides himself on taking care of his family. Stranding his wife and child in a distant airport was to him like taking the life boat from the Titanic and letting us go down with the ship. I had to convince him that 1- he needs to be sure to get back to work on Saturday and B- I'm safer waiting in an airport than driving by myself if he has to be picked up late at night at LAX or Orange County. He agreed with my reasoning and took off with our daughter to LAX- leaving me and my son in a very over crowded San Francisco airport.

Now I'm a pretty independent woman- I can generally handle most of what life throws me. However, when he walked onto that plane I felt like I got kicked in the stomach. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how much I depend on him to handle the challenges when we travel.

Well the good news is I'm writing this on a plane to Orange County- my husband is in route from Carlsbad to pick us up. The bad new was that we tried unsuccessfully to get on 5 planes before this one. When you are standby number 25 with 1 seat available you know you're the proverbial Hades snowball. We were that snowball for 5 different planes- and we weren't picky. We would have taken a flight to LAX, San Diego, Carlsbad or Orange County.

We've got one more week until his temp position is done for the summer. We've got one more chance to try our luck. I think I'll pray for green flights. The snowball doesn't melt so fast when the flight is green.

Nothing Like the Feeling of Grit Between Your Teeth

A few weeks ago we spotted an adventure in a travel magazine while flying on one of our adventures. It fit within our very strict standards for potential activities....ok our standards aren't really that strict. At the beginning of our adventure we had one standard- it had to look fun. Now we have a second standard- it has to be cheap. So this activity fit those two exacting standards quite well. It looked REALLY fun and it was under $30 for the family.

We went sand boarding in Florence, Oregon. Sand boarding is a little bit like snow boarding. Let me compare the two.

With snowboarding you have your booted feet strapped onto a board and careen out of control down snow covered slopes; sandboarding is the same except replace the snow with sand and take off the boots.

In snowboarding you get a little snow down your coat; in sandboarding you get get a LOT of sand down your shirt, down your pants, in your pockets, in your ears and most delightful of all, in your mouth, where it grits when you put your teeth together. It's especially fun wearing a retainer- just ask our 15 year old daughter.

In snowboarding the snow melts and goes away; in sandboarding you discover sand the next day in places you missed while cleaning up, like the cuffs of the shorts you wore or the deepest parts of your ears.

In snowboarding you fall really hard and hit your head; the same goes for sandboarding. They say it doesn't hurt with sandboarding because the sand is so soft.... they lie.

In snowboarding they have a delightful invention called a lift which takes you effortlessly up to the top of the hill again; in sandboarding they have a delightful thing called legs, which might explain why we lasted 3 hours vs. all day snowboarding. However, I can proudly say we lasted longer than anyone else on the dunes that day- not bad for a couple of oldsters.

Snowboarding can be cold; sandboarding was delightfully not hot on the Oregon coast.

Snowboarding's expensive; sandboarding's cheap.

Both are really fun.

Both are easier if you are a 13 year old boy than his 45 year old mom.

Both leave me with extremely sore muscles the next day.

Both leave me wanting more, that is as soon as my legs quit hurting.

Here Come the Coackroaches

This week we invaded our friend Melissa in San Antonio. I'm sure it felt a little bit like being overrun by cockroaches. Melissa's husband was away for work so she was outnumbered 4 to 1. Our sheer volume is magnified exponentially as well so we probably sounded not 4 times as loud but 256 times as loud. Melissa is neat and no matter how hard I try to be neat, messes just create themselves around me. The same goes for my son, except worse. Plus my teenage son now eats constantly- and Melissa had snacks so he was doing his best impression of vermin and getting into her food non stop. So the fact that Melissa stayed good natured, laughing and pleasant the 3 days we were there was quite amazing to me. She actually said she enjoyed our visit, which I hesitantly believe because she's not inclined to lie just to make me feel better. Which leads me to my topic. Everyone should travel a little bit by the seat of their pants because it connects us with other human beings in ways that nothing else can.
It's humbling to invade someone else's house. It points out some real character flaws that you may not notice when you're at your own house. Our loudness, our lack of neatness and our constant consumption of food were the three most obvious in this particular trip. But it was also really cool to see that someone would take time off from work, pick us up from the airport in two separate trips, one after midnight, show us the town all day, feed us, let us play her video games and movies and take us back to the airport, all in the name of friendship. It's nice to have a friend willing to do all that- and still like us when the trip is over.
Traveling- this kind of traveling, not the "everything is worked out perfectly and there is no room for error" kind of traveling- increases my faith in humanity and my feelings of connectedness to the rest of the world. We've had countless people offer us directions, recommend great places to eat, help us find the right stop on the metro, and show tremendous kindness to our kids. One of my favorite memories is when an older Austrian gentleman complemented my son, calling him a gut man kinder (good young man), on the bus. It also increases the debt I feel to the rest of society. Seeing the kindness of others makes me want to be kinder too.
My husband tops the list in my book for kindness to strangers. I married up. Let me share a story that happened quite a few years ago. We were traveling on the freeway in San Diego and walking along the freeway was an older woman dragging a large suitcase. My husband stopped to see if her car had broken down or if he could be of assistance in some way. This woman, probably in her late 60s, had seen baby Shamu on TV and decided to come out to see him. She was able to afford the bus ride out and the ticket to Sea World but realized that she didn't have enough money to make it home- to Arkansas. She was going to walk all the way home. We were newly weds ourselves and didn't have much money, but my husband called his friend and together they got enough money together to get her a bus ticket back home. They got her to the bus station, bought her ticket and made sure she was safely on the bus. I guess that one incident alone earned them a lot of good karma points. We are still the recipient of that good karma, every time we travel.
And that is why I recommend that everyone travel. It makes for a small world where we realize that the little things that we do for other people really make a difference in the big picture, that we are all indebted to one another for our well being, and that we are really much more alike that we realize.
Thanks Melissa, for teaching me those lessons yet again.

It's raining.........Bugs!

It's hot and humid in DC on any August day- but we went on a cool day- only 85 degrees and humid enough to feel like you'd never completely dried from your shower. After dragging ourselves from the Capitol building to the National Archives to the White House we were tired and hot. We went to the National Mall and found a quiet, grassy place under a shade tree and quickly fell asleep (We'd taken the red-eye and our only sleep that night had been on the plane, need I say more). When were awakened by a low grumble and found that the weather had changed. The grumble was thunder. The sunny skies were gone, replaced by low, gray clouds. When we started seeing the lightening we decided it was time to move.
We were right next to the World War II memorial. In that part of The Mall there are no buildings. Our only hope of shelter was to walk the 6 city blocks to the Lincoln Memorial- We didn't make it.
The thunder roared and the torrents began.
At first we dashed from the protection of one tree to the next, which worked for a little while. When we got close enough to really see the memorial we realized that they were repairing the stairs and we would have had to make a long dash, unprotected, across the width of The Mall and the length of the stairs, with lightening bolts near and bathtubs of cool water falling from the clouds.
By this time the protection of the trees was no match for the volume of the buckets of water washing down on them. We were soaked through every layer of clothing- and to make matters more comical, we were carrying all of our possessions because we hadn't checked into our hotel yet. Everything we had was soaked through.
It was at this point that we realized that the torrent was not only washing us but the trees as well. It was washing the bugs out of the trees. There we stood, dripping water from every appendage and covered in newly cleaned bugs.
It was a completely miserable experience and we stood under that tree for 30 minutes, waiting for the rain to stop- drenched, covered in bugs, and laughing hysterically- delighted to be together creating a family moment we'll never forget.

The Endless Quest for a Cheap Hotel

I hate paying lots of money for a place to lay my head and shower in the morning. I never spend time at the hotel when I'm traveling. It makes no sense in my mind to travel 3000 miles and spend time at some non-descript building when there is always something new and interesting to see, do, taste or explore elsewhere.
I've looked into couch surfing- staying for fee at someone's place- but most of the people on the website are 20 somethings, mostly male, and it doesn't seem safe to do that with an attractive teenage daughter in tow. Hostels are out for the same reason, we're too old and she's too cute. So were stuck leeching off our friends or finding the cheapest hotel we can that promises to not give us infectious diseases or contribute to our untimely demise. This is the story of this week's lodging adventure.
On Expedia I found the cheapest hotel in the DC area. It was a Comfort Inn- a reputable chain- so I wasn't particularly thorough when checking the reviews, however they were mostly positive- no talk of cockroaches or biker bars next door. My biggest concern was being able to get there with public transportation.
I found the route- the metro from the Smithsonian to the end- then a quick 1 1/2 miles by bus- easy and cheap.
The DC metro is clean, efficient and inexpensive and seems safe enough. The metro ride went without a hitch. When we went to the bus stop we quickly noted that our ethnicity was in the minority. In fact, we were the lone representatives of said ethnicity. We were out of our element- but that can be a good thing- especially when trying to reinforce color blindness in our children. But despite our attempts to be color blind we stuck out from the crowd, getting a few strange looks from our fellow rider, who didn't seem to be as color blind as we were attempting to be. One nice lady guessed we were going to the Comfort Inn and told us where our stop was located. I'm sure our destination couldn't have been more obvious if we'd have tattooed in on our foreheads.
When we got to the hotel the most telling detail of the type of neighborhood was the front desk. Completely surrounding the entire front desk area was a bullet proof glass shield like you could find at a bank. Usually that isn't the best way to instill confidence in your guests- by protecting the hotel employees with an impenitrable barrier while leaving the rest of the hotel open to whomever wants to roam the halls.
However, despite the unwelcoming architectural addition, the room was clean, the staff was nice, the breakfast was fine, and we found out that the other guests were mostly European tourist who must have arrived by rental car. That mode of arrival would have given a completely different feel, in that the hotel was just off the freeway and you wouldn't have known about the neighborhood by seeing only one block of it. That is, if you didn't notice the 2 inch think glass barricade.