Chasing some fish – http://vimeo.com/65280663
Swimming turtle – http://vimeo.com/65280705
I borrowed Bill’s SeaLife 1200 for this trip, as I didn’t want to pack my giant and awesome SCUBA camera for an unknown number of snorkel trips. Most of the crap in these videos is from the silt in the water – lots of wind today makes a lot of medium sized waves which stirs it all up near the shore.
3 flights this morning, then off to the other Hawaiian winery – meaning that Miranda and I have now visited 100% of the wineries in Hawaii. Then off to the beach again!
Oh yeah and…
TURTLE!!!!!!!
I have a couple videos as well, I’ll try to post them somewhere and link back here.
This was a hell of a day. We woke at 3am and left at 3:30am, arriving at Haleaekala an hour and a half later, driving up a winding mountain road in the dark. We were rewarded with a great looking sunrise.
After the sunrise, we drove down the hill and then back up a different section of hill and had a great flight from Ferns launch.
After our flight we drove around the road to Hana. We stopped at a lava tube just outside of Hana.
We were out for 14 hours, driving for a good chunk of it. When we got home, the sun went down shortly after and Miranda and I ran out to watch it head out.
It’s been a day of a single flight (clouds came in quickly), some swimming (still no bloody turtles!!).
We rented some snorkeling gear and a couple boogie boards and went to the beach this afternoon!
I’m not going to blog every day this time. I’m pretty blogged out after writing about all of Adepticon. 😛 But here’s some photos and some mini-stories to go with them. 🙂
The flight area in Maui is pretty nice. Big open green fields. Only a few things you have to worry about – some cattle, a spot for RC planes, cowpies and one fence. The LZ comes into a bowl, which is worrisome to land on since the ground continues sloping away as you’re trying to land, but it slopes up again shortly after and there’s lots of space.
We only got one flight in on the first day. The flying window is from 7am-ish until 11am-ish, if you’re lucky. The winds get to strong and/or to turbulent after that. The Echoes launch is a very easy launch – I called it Diefenbaker++, as you could really just kite all the way down the hill if you so choose.
Drove around, went to Lahaina and wandered around.
Up again early this morning and out to Echoes launch again. I had 2 easy flights and landings from there, Russ had 3 and Melissa had 2. The launch and landing are so close together that it’s easy to get many flights, even if they are max 6 minutes long.
After a flight each from Echoes (at 3000ft above sea level), we drove up another 15 minutes to Ferns launch, which is 6000ft above sea level. When we got up there, Dexter gave us a mini-orientation and then quickly had to go off to do a tandem before the clouds closed it off. He said that as long as you can see the valley, it was ok to launch. Apparently some pilots fly by instrument from here, since the clouds come in pretty quickly. One pilot we were talking to said that one time he was 4000 above the LZ and couldn’t see it, so he just kept flying out. You land in a cow field eventually, and when he drove back up to the LZ it was completely socked in.
We didn’t end up flying from here – the clouds came in and closed off the land and we decided to go down to the Echoes launch again. We’ll try Ferns tomorrow morning instead!
We went to a goat farm after that and checked out the goats and bought goat truffles. We’ll eat those later. 🙂
I think we barely avoided coming home with a new goat – they were on sale for $200-$240, which I think is fairly reasonable.
Sitting around the house now, having a mango and rum blended drink and doing computery things. Heading out to the beach shortly!
We started Friday early – lots to get done and a hard deadline in the middle.
The four of us had a desire to go surfing one more time so we found the first van we could find on the beach, grabbed 2 boards and Sean and I went out while the two girls sat on the beachish area and watched and took photos. We had less success than the day we took the lessons, but it was great to get out and try again. Would do it again!
Got some more shave ice, gathered our things together, sat by the pool and then by the road waiting for the shuttle to take Miranda and I to the airport. It was a tiny tiny little plane with a single propeller, and I took a few aerial photos.
Picked up a Nissan Ultima and started our 3-ish hour drive to Volcano, HI.
Drove into Volcano just as it was getting darker. This town is a little weird…the side of it with our place on it is 14 streets, by 10ish streets in a perfect grid, with 1 (maybe two) houses per lot with a lot of jungle trees on all sides. It’s very claustrophobic. And when driving in the dark, it’s a little creepy.
We found some food at the “best restaurant on the island” (according to our guidebook) and it was great food at the Kileaua Lodge and Restaurant. We had breakfast there as well, and the dinner leftovers for dinner the next night.
Saturday was very exciting with lots of awesome mountain and lava rock photos to come!
Thursday we had decided to not do a third day of diving, and instead to do a lot of driving. We made pancakes and bacon and eggs and then took off to drive “the nub” of Maui, which is the north west section of the island. Miranda and I had previously tried to do this, but got as far as Lahaina (which isn’t that far around).
This is a gorgeous drive, with only a few minor issues. A narrow, one lane road runs for about 9 miles of it, with a small town in the middle. Scary miles. Rain was an issue for a bit, but we got over it. The town in the middle is hilarious, with a number of small huts and houses selling food and/or random art and jewelry, etc.
We came out, grabbed some quick food at the Maui Tacos in the mall (surprisingly good) and then drove off to see the top of Haleakala, at 10,000 foot elevation.
It didn’t work out. Clouds at the top! And seriously cold up there.
On the way down, the clouds cleared a bit and we got some awesome views!
We came back down and drank some more. Sean and I almost managed to finish off the 60oz bottle of rum that we bought earlier that week. 🙂
I’m officially a day behind…lots of great photos and stories from today. But dive day two has some absolutely fantastic photos from it.
I’ve learned that when I import photos to my tablet, that the time on them is set to the import time, which serves to completely mess with the order of them. And the tablet has no facility to re-order, and I can’t brain enough (particularly after some amount of rum…) to order them manually.
I figured out why my keyboard wasn’t working last night, so we’re back in action! This keyboard is so awesome, I can’t type a blog post on the on-screen one anymore.
The first photo from yesterday needs some explanation. (perhaps they all do). I was trying to take a photo of some fish floating around, when suddenly a dark shape appeared overtop of me. I pulled the camera away from my face to see that it was Sean…photobombing my scuba photo. >.> Hilarious!
Today the diving was much better. More fish, more photos, more fun, less cold, less rain (none). I’m a little disappointed that I was unable to get a photo of a whale underwater…but that was a pipedream of a photo opportunity anyway, so it’ll be ok. I have a ton of awesome photos to post from today! Later…
Diving again at 6am. Then we gathered our things and drove to the top rated restaurant (Trip Advisor) on Kihei – a food truck called the Kinaole Grill. We grabbed some garlic shrimp scampi, coconut shrimp and panko mahi mahi (all with rice and pasta salad) and drove to a beach called Makena Landing. Lots of waves. We ate lunch and then went snorkeling with Sean while the ladies sunned and read and stuff on the beach. I’d say this was the first time that snorkeling showed me how it could be lots of fun – found a great little wall that we swam beside with tons of life and caves to dive and explore and lots of little fish (I love the little fishies).
We were there for a few hours and then drove back into town for more shave ice (actually…I didn’t blog about yesterday – we went shopping in Lahaina, and got shave ice). Shave ice is delicious. But you almost certainly have to have ice cream in the bottom. It’s like…ice cream and ice with a ton of syrup on it.
Came back, looked through some photos and now out for dinner and then more gaming and drinking. No diving tomorrow, so it could be a later night. A lot of options for tomorrow’s fun – we’ll see what happens!
(photos to follow tomorrow)