Mauna Loa factory tour (but not for real, only imaginary)
Thurston lava tube (and the debacle of flip flops and mixed messages, sidenote I did not die as Derek feared)
Foodland dinner (that hit the fucking spot, bitch)
asleep by 9
Alright, so here's the sitch:
It's currently April 6th. I have been home since March 19, and I have been struggling to maintain these Big Island blogs. Things have been fucking nuts, so I'll update here and then carry on with this blog for day six of Big Island.
First: we landed and went into quarantine. I felt sick, Derek felt sick a couple days later, we thought we had coronavirus. Well, I thought I had it. Derek thought I just had anxiety. He got tested, and we got weird results back from his doctor, so I still maintain that we definitely had it. I've been studying for an exam that I most DEFINITELY failed, given that about 44 of the points I didn't even fucking attempt because I had no idea what I was doing. That leaves 56 points if I got every single question correct, and I doubt I did. So that's where I'm at for my stats class, which I am fairly fucking resigned to failing as a whole at this point. I am figuratively drowning in that god damn class, and I do not know how to help myself. Reading my book is overwhelming, I can't go in and get a tutor because that shit is O-V-E-R for now (virtual tutors are available, but booked up solid right now), but I guess the best I can hope for is a D and that'll shoot my fucking 3.8 GPA to shit, and I am fucking ANGRY because this is my last god damn class before my capstone, and that doesn't apply to my GPA.
Most importantly.
Yesterday, Gabriel fainted at the top of the stairs and clunked himself down all 12 of them. He split his head wide open, busted open his eyebrow, had two fist sized hematomas on each side of his head (like mother fuckin' Frankenstein's Monster. That's how his forehead looked), and a number of cuts, scrapes, bruises, and gashes all over the rest of his body. Like he had been in a fucking car wreck. When I'm caught up on these entries, and I know Gabriel is out of the woods (he needed stitches and has quite the concussion, though he is otherwise in great spirits and will be his old self in a week or two), I'll post the photos I took and a full account of the day. Another time, though. Not right now.
Right now it's Big Island time!!
So, on day six, we took another fairly leisurely whack at the day. We wanted to get back to Poke Market for Derek and I, so we headed to Hilo at about 10:30 to make it there for opening at 11. The weather was shitty again, which was pretty fine with us, as we had planned on going to the Mauna Loa Macadamia Factory tour (bad news from the future!), and that was a pretty indoor activity.
Poke Market didn't disappoint (though I think the girl working there, as nice as she was, was not as generous with her portions as the guys from our prior visit. She bordered on stingy, if I'm being frank).
I got the same thing I had the day before, but with two helpings of crab salad because something or other wasn't there (OH! Lomi tomato), AND I got an extra half pound of Hawaiian style tuna. I did, in fact, eat every last delicious morsel. In about five minutes.
I really do think this garden could be quite photogenic, under different weather conditions. And I would fucking LOVE to do a mermaid shoot on that stone bridge. We have one out here (it's white, though) that I am aching to do mermaid shoots on. I think bridges are quite mermaid-y, if they have the right atmosphere, and I think this bridge does.
When the rain dulled enough to only get kinda soaked as we ran to the car, we uh...ran to the car. We didn't really have a solid plan of attack for the day, and it was still REALLY early. So we went to a little park across the street from the gardens, and I saw this bird looking quite sorry for itself:
So, that's the entrance. I didn't do it justice, it really is incredible, but uh, I'm boring. I am a boring photographer. For landscapes, especially.
Once we got in the cave, Derek set up the tripod, and took a few shots. I took my turn, and...well....meh:
I had really hoped for something a bit more dramatic with the flashlight bouncing through the cave, but this is what I got. Something less dramatic.
You can barely tell that they're flashing it against that bit in the back.
As I was taking my shots, Gabriel just...made his way through the cave. I put everything away, and Derek and I followed after. My flip flops were slipping more, I was getting widgy about them breaking, and when Derek said, "yeah, there're going to be a lot of puddles in here" I was like, uh, no thanks. See you at the car!! And then I went back to the front of the lava tube instead of going to the car, because I decided to wait for them instead.
I was waiting very patiently for Derek and Gabriel to come back. Waiting and waiting. I thought maybe I should take a picture of the cave entrance from the inside:
And one more, for the cheap seats on the bridge:
asleep by 9
Alright, so here's the sitch:
It's currently April 6th. I have been home since March 19, and I have been struggling to maintain these Big Island blogs. Things have been fucking nuts, so I'll update here and then carry on with this blog for day six of Big Island.
First: we landed and went into quarantine. I felt sick, Derek felt sick a couple days later, we thought we had coronavirus. Well, I thought I had it. Derek thought I just had anxiety. He got tested, and we got weird results back from his doctor, so I still maintain that we definitely had it. I've been studying for an exam that I most DEFINITELY failed, given that about 44 of the points I didn't even fucking attempt because I had no idea what I was doing. That leaves 56 points if I got every single question correct, and I doubt I did. So that's where I'm at for my stats class, which I am fairly fucking resigned to failing as a whole at this point. I am figuratively drowning in that god damn class, and I do not know how to help myself. Reading my book is overwhelming, I can't go in and get a tutor because that shit is O-V-E-R for now (virtual tutors are available, but booked up solid right now), but I guess the best I can hope for is a D and that'll shoot my fucking 3.8 GPA to shit, and I am fucking ANGRY because this is my last god damn class before my capstone, and that doesn't apply to my GPA.
Most importantly.
Yesterday, Gabriel fainted at the top of the stairs and clunked himself down all 12 of them. He split his head wide open, busted open his eyebrow, had two fist sized hematomas on each side of his head (like mother fuckin' Frankenstein's Monster. That's how his forehead looked), and a number of cuts, scrapes, bruises, and gashes all over the rest of his body. Like he had been in a fucking car wreck. When I'm caught up on these entries, and I know Gabriel is out of the woods (he needed stitches and has quite the concussion, though he is otherwise in great spirits and will be his old self in a week or two), I'll post the photos I took and a full account of the day. Another time, though. Not right now.
Right now it's Big Island time!!
So, on day six, we took another fairly leisurely whack at the day. We wanted to get back to Poke Market for Derek and I, so we headed to Hilo at about 10:30 to make it there for opening at 11. The weather was shitty again, which was pretty fine with us, as we had planned on going to the Mauna Loa Macadamia Factory tour (bad news from the future!), and that was a pretty indoor activity.
Poke Market didn't disappoint (though I think the girl working there, as nice as she was, was not as generous with her portions as the guys from our prior visit. She bordered on stingy, if I'm being frank).
I got the same thing I had the day before, but with two helpings of crab salad because something or other wasn't there (OH! Lomi tomato), AND I got an extra half pound of Hawaiian style tuna. I did, in fact, eat every last delicious morsel. In about five minutes.
I didn't even take a picture of what Derek got. I was so fucking involved, eating my poke like the ravenous cow I am.
Once I had hoovered my poke down, and Derek had eaten his at a gentlemanly pace, and we had gone to get Gabriel some L&L katsu (if it's not Baroque, don't fix it), we took a short drive to Lili'uokulani Park and Gardens. We figured Gabriel could sit and eat his katsu while Derek and I wandered around the garden with our cameras. That's kind of what happened?
Gabriel ate his katsu, but didn't want to eat very much, so he wandered around with me while Derek cleaned out the rental. By the time Derek caught up with us, the sky was ready to open up on us. The weather had left us uninspired to shoot anything, because the gardens just didn't look terribly photogenic in the grey of the day. But THEN!!!! I found a pair of saffron finches, and I sat down with a long lens, Derek sat down with a long lens, and we each took about a thousand photos of them picking away at grass seeds.
LOOK HOW FUCKING CUTE!!!!!!! I am like, hairs away from these photos being sharp where they should be, but given that by this time, it had started pouring and I was trying to keep my settings fast enough to freeze the bird but not catch the rain with an ISO high enough that light was caught effectively, but the shots weren't grainy, I'm not wholly mad at the shots. I mean, I am, but I guess at least I know how I fucked up.
Look at it preen itself!!!!! I was not fast enough to catch this fully, but it's too cute not to post it.
The rain really had started coming down now, and while my camera is weathersealed, my sensibilities are not. Gabriel was smart and had sought shelter under the awning of the restroom, so I ran over to him, and Derek followed soon after. It was quite the downpour, so we were holed up there for a solid fifteen minutes. While I felt uninspired as I wandered around, boredom got the best of me while I was waiting for the rain to subside enough to make a dash to the car.
I really do think this garden could be quite photogenic, under different weather conditions. And I would fucking LOVE to do a mermaid shoot on that stone bridge. We have one out here (it's white, though) that I am aching to do mermaid shoots on. I think bridges are quite mermaid-y, if they have the right atmosphere, and I think this bridge does.
When the rain dulled enough to only get kinda soaked as we ran to the car, we uh...ran to the car. We didn't really have a solid plan of attack for the day, and it was still REALLY early. So we went to a little park across the street from the gardens, and I saw this bird looking quite sorry for itself:
We saw a couple smoking, and as always, I wondered aloud how people can afford to smoke in Hawaii. It's so fucking expensive. Smoking has never been cheap, one of many reasons I was so fucking pleased to quit 5 years ago, but a pack of cigarettes here costs 8-11 dollars, depending on where you go (though I think Chicago tops the list. Derek and I felt like one lone cigarette while we were in Chicago, and a pack cost us 16 bucks. Ouch). That has nothing to do with anything, but it's weeks later and I remember remarking on that. I ALWAYS remark on that. Anyway, Derek said we should head down to the macadamia factory, and I agreed. The drive was quite pretty, as full of macadamia trees as you might guess. When we got there, we found the factory lot fairly empty. Eerily empty. Apocalypse levels of empty.
My dumb ass took these pictures once the joint had livened up, so my tone doesn't quite match the receipts. I told Derek maybe it was closed, because it's about this point that things started closing because of coronavirus. I was half right...the factory tour bit was closed, but the gift shop was open. So we milled the gift shop, the boys sampled the ridiculous flavors on display (cookies and cream? It's a macadamia nut. It's rich enough on its own. Don't garbage it up, please), I looked at the overpriced gifts and then we just...left. We spent maybe ten minutes there. Kind of a bust, really, and Derek was really disappointed. We still had a lot of time to fill the day with, so we decided to make our final push to Volcanoes National Park to do the Thurston Lava Tube, which had been a HUGE draw for me. I was stoked to do it, Gabriel was stoked to do it, Derek was stoked to do it, the consensus was easily reached.
Now.
I can't remember if I mentioned in a previous blog or not, but I had developed a fucking NASTY blister on my toe. Just agonizing. I needed a break from my sneakers, so Derek and I had agreed that this day would be no hiking, just easy, mosying pace excursions. So I wore shorts and flip flops, as one does when they expect to just be touristing around the joint.
Volcanoes National Park CAN be done in flip flops. Honestly, I've been on hikes here on Oahu that are tricky as fuck and I've seen people wearing their slippas on the trail. Mother fuckers are crazy. My flippies would have been fine except it was fucking foggy. So god damn foggy we couldn't even see. Foggy and rainy and MUDDY. The trail was about 3 miles, round trip, and my legs looked like someone had splattered me with a paint brush. Here's a preview of them at the beginning of the trip, though I didn't take a shot of them at the end because I was more concerned about finding a bathroom so I could pee:
Not my best look. But no biggie.
Like I said, it was super fucking foggy. There are a few lookouts on the trail where you can see across the crater floor, but uh, it was not a great day for those vantages:
It looks like I only took one picture of the trail, and that's because it was so fucking wet and full of puddles that I didn't want to drop my camera. I had to navigate the murky twists and turns in my flip flops, which felt perilously close to breaking. I've had them for almost two years, so I have been expecting them to break any day now, which will hurt my feelings as they are my favorite flippies. But here is the one photo of the first third of the trail:
Crap picture. I know. I did warn days ago that these were all posterity shots, not pretty ones.
I had to take the trail fairly slowly, because my flippies were getting stuck in every murk swamp, my flippies felt like they were about to break, and walking still hurt my blister. So Derek hung behind to take photos of...fungus, I think...while Gabriel and I slowly made our way forward. When we finally got to the lava tube, I can't even remember what Gabriel was fucking twerked out about, but he had copped a fucking MAJOR attitude and was pissed as fuck to have to wait around while Derek and I tried to get photos of the opening to the tube.
We were not very successful. Or at least, I wasn't. I haven't seen Derek's shots yet.
So, that's the entrance. I didn't do it justice, it really is incredible, but uh, I'm boring. I am a boring photographer. For landscapes, especially.
Once we got in the cave, Derek set up the tripod, and took a few shots. I took my turn, and...well....meh:
I had really hoped for something a bit more dramatic with the flashlight bouncing through the cave, but this is what I got. Something less dramatic.
You can barely tell that they're flashing it against that bit in the back.
As I was taking my shots, Gabriel just...made his way through the cave. I put everything away, and Derek and I followed after. My flip flops were slipping more, I was getting widgy about them breaking, and when Derek said, "yeah, there're going to be a lot of puddles in here" I was like, uh, no thanks. See you at the car!! And then I went back to the front of the lava tube instead of going to the car, because I decided to wait for them instead.
I was waiting very patiently for Derek and Gabriel to come back. Waiting and waiting. I thought maybe I should take a picture of the cave entrance from the inside:
And one more, for the cheap seats on the bridge:
And like...an hour had gone by. I was starting to get worried, and I wanted to go to the car, but I kept thinking that if I did, they'd be back any minute. Almost all of the other families that had gone in had come back, except them, and I was mildly alarmed. But I stayed put. I manned my post. About thirty minutes later, I hear Derek's deliciously deep, silky man voice coming down the path at me....but...from the other way. From OUTSIDE the cave. I look out and see my boys, and I wave excitedly, if not a little confusedly, and that's when I notice that Derek looks PISSED and Gabriel looks relieved. Now. Sometimes, the two of them don't always get along. When they have these breakdowns in communication, I always step in and facilitate better ways of interacting, so my first assumption was that they had had some sort of fight and I would have to jump right in and manage their discussion. But then I understood that Derek was pissed...at ME. Gabriel looked relieved to see me but like...not in the way where I was his savior from Derek, in the "I thought something bad had happened to you thank goodness you're ok" kind of way. So I was like, HI GUYS!!!! Why are you coming at me from thisaway, not the tubeaway? Gabriel exclaims "MOM!!!" And Derek was like, "What the hell, Drea, why didn't you go back to the car??" And I was like, "uh, well, I just thought I'd wait for you to come back and we'd walk up back to the car together. Where did you guys go? I've been waiting!"
Turns out....
I had completely lost track of the fact that the lava tube was not a dead end kind of deal. It went straight through, all the way back to the first division between trail sections. Derek says he told me that, and I swear that if he did, I had forgotten (I am not sure he did, but I can't say for sure either way). So the boys went all the way through, got to the car, didn't find me there, and panicked a little. As I am clumsy and my flippies were ready to break, I can almost understand why they thought I had gone fucking tumbling over the edge of something and was in broken, bloody pieces at the bottom of some volcanic ravine. But I wasn't. My dumb ass was just hanging out at the front of the lava tube where they had left me. Because I saw every single family return and leave the tube from the same place they came in, it never occurred to me that I was being a dumb ass. Gabriel told me how relieved he was, because he was worried, Derek told me he was annoyed because he was worried, it was a whole thing that I'm underselling because it's been weeks and I can't remember all of the details.
We walked back to the car, and I was just...I was a muddy mess, we were all soaked from the mist and the rain, and we had a long drive back to the hotel. We tried to figure out what we were going to do for dinner, and I was too tired to go sit at a restaurant, so we decided to go to Foodland and grab a mish mash of bullshit and feast on that back at the hotel. Gabriel, of course, fell asleep on the way back (this kid sleeps more than the dead, I swear to fucking christ). I was really surprised to see that Foodland was fairly well stocked, as Wal-Mart had been depleted as FUCK (though I was not surprised when Safeway was fully stocked, as well. Mostly because Safeway is expensive as balls out here), so we really had a good bit of stuff to choose our weird dinners from. I went with some Boar's Head roasted chicken that I used to wrap up handfuls of spring mix, and dip sparingly in ranch, paired with what was meant to be a delightful bowl of cauliflower rice, but was instead a barely palatable bowl of cauliflower rice that I ate with revulsion. Derek had friend chicken, and Gabriel had a deli sandwich that he fucking LOVED. He's a simple child, when it comes to food, and that is a trait I both love and loathe. He isn't adventurous, but he isn't hard to please when it comes to food. That makes it easy for Derek and I, but also frustrating for Derek and I, because we're locusts. We'll eat whatever is in our path. We've read about recipes from around the world, salivated over them, taken the time to order whatever ingredients weren't available locally, just so we can try and make the dish we read about (the most recent: fish amok. My new favorite. It's scrummy). We love food, and Gabriel loves food, too, just...you know...bland food he's familiar with.
After we ate, we went to bed. It wasn't a busy day, but it was a LONG day.
To wrap up, it is now April 26th, a full 20 fucking days after I started writing this, and a full god damn month and some change since returning from Hawaii.
I am really selling the idea that I truly am the worst. To go ahead and pile on...I don't even remember what we filled the 7th day with. I'm going to have to go back and check out Lightroom to see what we did, and I may not be able to do a blow by blow of the next two days. Also, I have long deleted the cell phone photos I took for documenting the day when I was too lazy or unprepared with my camera.
Oy.
After we ate, we went to bed. It wasn't a busy day, but it was a LONG day.
To wrap up, it is now April 26th, a full 20 fucking days after I started writing this, and a full god damn month and some change since returning from Hawaii.
I am really selling the idea that I truly am the worst. To go ahead and pile on...I don't even remember what we filled the 7th day with. I'm going to have to go back and check out Lightroom to see what we did, and I may not be able to do a blow by blow of the next two days. Also, I have long deleted the cell phone photos I took for documenting the day when I was too lazy or unprepared with my camera.
Oy.
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