Underwater Eye candy

O.K., so this guy isn't underwater. But isn't he cool! Or she. I didn't check under the shell. Anyway, we're at Pu'uhonua O Honaunau (Place of Refuge) National Historic Park. There were lots of turtles here. This one sunbathed here for a while. 

This is an eel. Probably not in the category of eye candy either, but still cool to look at. 

Honu! That's Hawaiian speak for sea turtle. They don't fear you or swim away. They just continue about there business. Sometimes I'd be looking at fish, justing floating, and a turtle would come swimming by. More than once they scared the poi out of me. They're considerable larger than anything else in the water.

This is a moorish Idol and a convict Tang. More to follow.

This is a school of Yellow Tang. They're at about 15 feet deep.

Volcano Flowing into The Ocean Day 2 Part 3

After we left the national park, we drove to a place outside of the park where the lava was actually flowing. We had to walk this "trail" for about 1/2 a mile. This flow was in 1982 and destroyed a subdivision.

This is the trails end and as close as you can get without getting arrested. It's about a half mile away. Occasionally, we could see black chunks fly up into the air. At night, you can see that those chunks are actually glowing lava. 

The conditions where the lava falls into the ocean are so violent that it creates funnel clouds. We saw one, it started close to the base then slowly worked its way out, then disappeared.

My battery died on my camera, and this is the best picture I got of the glow.

I took this video before I knew my battery was gonna die. I'd rather have a better night glow picture. Oh well.

Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park Day 2 Part 2

This is a steam vent with in the park. We stood in the steam  for a bit to warm up. It's about 80 degrees down on the coast, but we're at about 4ooo feet and the temp is in the 50's or 60's. The steam actually got uncomfortably hot at times.

The pillar of smoke and steam is a new eruption that started last March. Because of it, they've had to close part of the crater rim drive. The crater is called the Kilauea Caldera.

This is the Kilauea Crater, it's about a tenth the size of the Caldera. I can't get the whole crater in the picture, but to give you an idea of how big it is, there's two people in the picture. Can you see them?

Some times lava creates tubes from cooling and winds up traveling through them. This is the Thurston Lava Tube. It rains a lot on this part of the island and rain water seeps through the roof and drips down into the tube.

The kids are sitting on a shelf inside the tunnel. It's like a smaller tube was carved out of the side of the main tube.

Punalu'u Beach Day 2 Part 1

I'm gonna have to break this up into more than one blog per day. We did and saw too much. Is there such a thing?

This is a fruit stand and one of the many things I love about Hawaii. They're common on all the islands. We were driving to the volcano and saw this fruit stand. There's a lock box and all the fruit is labeled and priced. You pick what you want and put the money in the lock box. It's a good thing they're labeled, because this haole (pronounced "howlee" and is hawaiian for foreigner, or more specifically, white foreigner) couldn't tell you what half of them were.

So this was our next stop on the way to the volcano, Punalu'u Beach. A black sand beach. It was over cast this day, but you can imagine how hot that would get! It is a course sand and your feet do not turn black. There were turtles floating around just a few feet off the beach.

Dad's holding a coconut we found. We did peel and eat it.

I think I'll call this one, "Alaskan Haole Against Lava Black".  Justice was more than happy to lay down on the sand.

O.K. Where to Begin?

I really don't know the best way would to post all the pictures I want to share, so I guess I'll pick a few from each day, then do the underwater fish pictures as one blog. So here it goes.

Part of our vacation was kept a secret from the kids. Their grandma and grandpa Edlin were joining us. Their plane came in later than ours and while Cathy was shopping with the older two, I took Colt and Justice to this beach near the airport. It's called Wawaloli Beach and is on the Kona Coast, we're standing on an old lava flow. Where the waves are crashing is a 10-20 foot cliff. Some waves rocket 20-30 feet above the lava. We had fun and nobody fell and cut their self.

Now, we're at the rental home in the driveway. Colt hasn't perfected the "Hang Loose" sign yet. He's still rocking to KISS! Those are unripe Papaya in the two trees behind him. They are ripe when they turn yellow, delicious! One of my favorites.

I took this picture from the lanai, which is what they call a porch or patio in Hawaii. I could do an entire post on the flowers alone.

Meg has a Plumeria blossom in her hair. The back ground is washed out, but we can see the ocean from the house.

More to come...

...when I have time. I have about 300 pictures to sort and label. I'll have to post them in blocks. We had a great time and I'll update as soon and often as I can.

Well Hello!

I know, it's been a while.  So here's a quick one to get me started again. You know these guys.

I took this picture while hunting for ptarmigan, wolves, fox and whatever on the Denali Highway. The mountains in the background are part of the Alaska Range. We stayed two nights in the cabin just visible in the bottom right of the picture. We had to ride about ten miles on snow machines to get there. This was the morning of the last day. The clouds moved out and the temp dropped like crazy. Awesome view.

This is a sleeping ptarmigan. I wanted to show the detail of the Alaska state bird. The red above the eye is not from injury, I don't know what it's for, courting I suppose.