the crucible: our almost-free vacation part one

I felt that just a little blurb in my last entry was not enough to describe just how freakin' awesome our trip to Hawaii was. The other bonus is that I no longer feel obligated to email pictures to everyone. So here's some of the highlights:

Our room was great but who cares? I had no desire to spend any amount of time there, but the view was pretty okay. Not exactly an "ocean view" but I spent some time spying on one of our vice presidents playing golf one morning. And a little tipsy, too.

We spent our first day there just hanging around the resort. Jonathan spent most of the day snorkeling and had a blast. It came at a heavy price however...he sunburned his back horribly. Meanwhile, I entertained myself at the beach and the pool and visited with some honu turtles that come to the beach every day.

We also went to the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park a couple of times. The first time it was during the day and all you could see was steam coming up out of the crater of Mount Kilauea. We went again on our last night (this time to Pu'u O'o, the heart of the current eruption) and got to see the lava flowing into the ocean. We were pretty far away, but the park had set up a telescope for people to get a better look. It looked like 2 or 3 waterfalls of red molten lava pouring into the ocean creating big billows of steam when the tide came in. I'm posting some video we took, but it doesn't to it justice. Truly a moving experience I will carry with me the rest of my life.

I'm not sure if you can hear the audio, but on the video I had just asked one of the park rangers the age of the ground we were standing on. He said it was about 18 years old...ten years younger than me. Crazy. There were tons of people there that night and most of them were standing there silently, watching new earth being created before their eyes.

Fishing was second on Jonathan's Must Do list, after the volcano. We went one day with a shop manager buddy of mine. No sooner had I gotten up out of the chair, Doug sat down and reeled in a 70" spearfish. Whatever that is. Anyway. Jonathan and I were only slightly jealous but got a big kick out of seeing him get so excited about it, smoking cigarettes and calling his dad. I took some video when they pulled it from the water and didn't expect to see it get beaten to death. I would post it, but I'm sure I would hear about it from my mother so I'll spare her the lecture.