I love flying...NOT

Oh the joys of traveling. After having a nice, relaxing, final weekend with Elena and her family, I am on my way home. We had game night Saturday which got a little heated and sassy...remembered me of Vogler game nights as well. My flight was originally supposed to leave at 7 pm Monday night, however to my unfortunate discovery it go changed to 10:20 am it would depart Hilo, HI. because of this change I would have a 10 hour layover in Maui. Greatttt another boring layover! I've survived so far, just 4 more hours and then my next flights and then I'm home!!!! I'm currently on my 5th movie since my morning flight even landed 30 minutes early. Good thing I was worried about missing my connecting flight.... oh well. I'm just glad to almost be home!

Oh, Thursday

We started the day with the plan of dropping Elena's mom off at work, coming back to the house for breakfast, and then heading to Akaka Falls to check it out. However, things don't always work out as planned! We got home and about a half hour later her mom called saying she needed the car to go to a client's house. So, Elena and I drove back to her work and asked her to drop us off at the library where we would hangout for an hour or so until she was done and would pick us up.

The car her mom owns is a prius so you don't need a key in the ignition to start it/drive. When Elena and I were dropped off at the library, Elena had the key in her bag and her mom didn't have a key. The car continued driving but once it would be turned off her mom would not be able to turn it back on without the key. SO, the solution was one of Elena's dad's dive students, Jake, drove over to the library, picked Elena and I up, and we set out to try and find her mom. However, her mom only gave us the street name and not an address number, so we had no idea which end of the street the house was one. After first going down the wrong end, I spotted the car parked outside a house. Elena sheepishly went and knocked on the door, but after a minute of no one answering, we deducted that it was the wrong house....awkward. We were just happy no one answered. We then looked across the street and next door to guess which was the right house. Luckily, Elena guessed correctly and we found her mom. After we got the key situation figured out and had the car back for the day we got some food, watched an episode of Monk waiting for the rain to die down a little, and then set out for Akaka Falls, our destination for the day.

We got to the Falls no problem, not too far away. However, to our unfortunate discovery, you had to pay to get in. I had a few single bills with me, but we decided we would skip the walk since it was raining harder when we got there so Elena just took my picture with the picture of the falls and explained how tall it was compared to us. I got a good visual, and we stayed dry.

A crazy unexpected day, but then again, life is more fun when the unexpected happens!

a few random pictures

The beach!

my two-toned arm from the wet suit :(

car washing pro

randomness of the past few days

The past few days we spent mostly lounging around and enjoying being "summertime lazy". Saturday night we went back to volcanoes national park to see the volcano glow, but unfortunately it was raining and cloudy so we couldn't see it. Sunday we spent cleaning the house for the arrival of Elena's brother, Sterling, and grandmother from Oregon on Monday afternoon. They flew into Kona, which is 2 hours away from Elena's house so her and I got up early to spend the morning in Kona looking around and then we would meet her parents at the airport. We beat her parents to the airport, and after driving around the airport about 11 times keeping our eyes out for them, we finally found them! They were both awake enough so we spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach on Kona side. The weather was really weird. It was raining where Elena lived, cloudy at the airport, but hot an sunny at the beach. Strange, strange. Regardless, we enjoyed lounging at the beach and getting tan, and swimming in the waves/water which was the perfect temperature! And despite Elena ruining my driving reputation by telling her parents I was the typical new england crazy driver, I drove Elena and I back safely. I officially drove in Hawaii woot woot! Today our task was to wash the cars. Her moms car was easy, but the one that had been sitting in the driveway not and didn't work was pretty darn dirty! While Elena and Sterling began waxing her mom's car I decided I would start tackling the dirty, white expedition. Everyone can just call me the car washing pro from now on. I went all out on that car, daddy you should be proud! I even climbed on the roof to scrub the dirt off. It was like when I would climb into the rooftop carrier for trips, but instead I had a hose and scrubbing brush. I also probably got half the water on my clothes...but hey, free shower for the win!

we like to live on the edge

Elena's internet is down so her and I are currently at starbucks using their free wifi to update our blogs haha. (check hers out! veggielocomoco.blogspot.com) On Wednesday we went to Volcanoes National Park. It was super cool!! Unfortunately it was raining so it wasn't as pretty according to Elena, but it was still fun to drive around. We walked through the lava tube made by flowing lava that hardened on the outside while in the middle it was still hot and flowing creating a tunnel. We also saw an active volcano from a distance. It wasn't erupting into the air or anything, but it was smoking!!

Photo Credit for this post: Elena

On Thursday we went to Waipio Valley. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into!! It was very pretty, but man was it a hike! For those of you who know, picture Grandma and Papa Vogler's driveway and multiply it by at least 10 and that's what we hiked down and then up again. It was wicked steep and scary and tiring!! But it was beautiful at the bottom and Elena and I made the best of it by making a "rap video" on the way back up. (I'll see if I can upload that at some point later since it's on my phone) 

At the bottom we walked along the beach and we even befriended a dog that was wandering about. He wouldn't leave us alone so we just continued exploring. We also saw some horses just chillin down there. Then these dumb people came and decided they would give the horses some chips so then the horses wouldn't stop following us!!! I kept my distance since I'm not a big fan of them. Then this other car came and the people were looking at the horses. They then decided it'd be fun to feed a horse BEER. That was Elena and my cue to leave haha. So we began our trip back up the never ending hill. We were hoping a car would drive by us and we were walking up we could hitchhike with but no cars came. Oh well, now we can say we walked the whole thing!!! 

After making it safely back to our car at the top, eating lunch, and resting our tired legs, we went to downtown Honoka'a. It was super small but a cute little town. We got some delicious fudge from one of the local shops so that was a nice treat for all our hard work. After more resting and eating our fudge we made our way home. This morning we both woke up very sore from yesterday, but it was definitely worth it!

a day of true adventure

We had quite the day today. Started off by getting locked out of the house after dropping her mom off at work. Elena couldn't find her keys in the morning so she just used her mom's car key, but didn't have house keys. We thought her dad would still be home when we got back but alas, he had left. But not leaving before he locked the house up. Our only way in was for Elena to hardcore par-core the back of the house. Luckily we found a ladder laying on the ground so we were able to lean it against the house and she climbed up and over the banister to open the back door. Of course 5 minutes after we were back in the house her dad came home....and mind you, it was only 7:30 a.m. so we were not completely awake and coherent.

After using our awesome breaking-into-houses skills, we piled into the truck and went for my first pleasure dive now that I'm certified!! We went to Leleiwi and the deepest we went was about 47 feet so that was a little nerve-racking! But it was an awesome dive. We saw a ton more fish, (I saw the smallest Nemo clown fish ever!!!) some gorgeous coral, an octopus (!!!!), and turtles!!! Can't believe I've swam with dolphins and turtles now, I'm so lucky!! We saw 4 or 5 turtles total, and one caught me off guard at first. I was looking at one swimming when Elena's dad caught my attention and was pointing to something to my right. I looked down but all I saw was coral so I was confused when he was laughing. Then Elena grabbed my arm and pointed to the right at the bottom where a pretty big turtle was just chilling on the ground! It was wicked cool. Made me think of finding Nemo with the turtles all swimming around.

After our sweet dive Elena and I stopped at Wal-mart to get some stuff and we saw this wicked sketchy thing going down. The 2 cars parked across from us in the lot had 2 cops there! One was writing a citation while talking to a mom in a car with a little boy in the driving seat (they were parked of course) and then there was another cop checking out the back of a pickup truck full of luggage! It looked like a drug bust or the people were running or something. I really wanted to know what was going on but it was awkward we were just staring so we left haha.

To finish off our day, we finished making our cake balls we started yesterday! I made a mess again naturally. They're super yummy and we even put silver jimmies on some of them. And YES, the bottle said jimmies like back home. Yay New England slang!

I'm certified!!!

Started off the morning bright and early again by going to a park to relax for a couple hours. It was a nice sunny day so the weather was perfect to lay on the grass and do nothing! After that Elena decided it would be fun to explore a "porta potty graveyard". We had driven by a whole bunch of them just chillin together and she wanted to check it out. However when we returned to their location we discovered they were literally in someone's backyard...I would not want to be their neighbor that's for sure!!!

After that adventure we went to Big Island Candies! It was a small little chocolate store that had some free samples throughout the store to try. They were super delicious so I decided to buy some. Definitely worth it! After our chocolate spree we headed back to the house where I took all my quizzes and final test to become a certified scuba diver. I passed woohoo!!!!!! I am not an open-water certified diver. I bet a lot of people never thought that would happen given my snorkel experience last summer with my best friend- a monk seal....


















To finish off the day Elena's mom was in the mood to make cake balls. Naturally I'm not going to turn down that offer! It got pretty messy though. Elena and I had to mix it with our hands. It was worth it in the end when i got to eat the extra off my fingers! Unfortunately I discovered just how messy it was to do so. We didn't finish them but hopefully tomorrow we shall. I'm wicked excited!