Krashing Kona...

Despite my deplorable bedding on the curb of the airport, I arrived in Kona with enough energy to spare. However, my family had been on a whirlwind of a vacation while I was at my work conference in Sydney. So they had been quite busy seeing all of the sights, and were winding down on the vacation.

My first night was mostly just sitting around our very cozy condo that my parents got from their time share. The next morning, however, we got up and did something which I am ashamed to say I hadn’t done in years, even though I had been living in Hawaii: snorkeling.

We went to Kealakokua bay. That is the bay where Captain Cook became “Captain Cooked.” He met his untimely demise, but became a lovely casserole for the Hawaiian people after a skirmish over canoe borrowing. Now the reef there is a nationally protected region.

Captain Cook Memorial

We took a boat to the spot. There we snorkeled and took dozens of pictures with our disposable cameras.

Family on the boat

Reef Traffic

Deep Shaka

Double Shaka

Honu (Sea Turtle)

Following that we were pretty worn out. The next day we embarked on the adventure of “Fluming the Ditch.” In the village of Hawi, a sugar plantation owner needed to get more water from the wetlands to his dry crops in the Kona leeward. He paid Chinese laborers something like $.50 a day to work on the ditch. In 18 months, his ditch, miles long, was complete. The sugar has left the island, but the ditch stayed.

The bumpy van ride to the ditch was more adventuresome than the ditch ride itself. It was like Disneyland’s Indiana Jones ride, only not animatronics and much, much longer.

Fluming the Ditch was actually quite serene. I got to be the one bringing up the rear. I had a miner’s hat on my head and paddle to whack my brother-in-law, Rob’s head with.

Not the most spacious life jacket.

Goofy Rob

Being our last night in Kona, we took pictures of our last Hawaiian sunset.

I couldn't decide on which one I liked better.

And after that, we celebrated Independence Day two days early, the 2nd of July. Since our country actually did declare independence on the second, it was more fitting anyway.

Too Much For Mom

Even though there are fireworks going off, I'm still trying to light more off.

We flew back to Honolulu the next day where Go! Airlines lost 7 of our 15 bags. That was fun. They eventually found our bags in time for us to make our flight that afternoon back to Arizona.

Of the two and a half weeks my family was celebrating my vacation with me, I was only there for 4 days of it. Still, I had a good time, especially knowing that I would not have any homework to catch up on as a result.

When I arrived in Arizona, I knew I only had 4 days to get my stuff together, boxed up and shipped out, because I had a ticket waiting for me to finally hit my final destination – Guam.