So long, farewell, aloha and goodbye

I suspect this will be my last blog post from Hawaii. (At least THIS time around - knock on wood).

It's a little bittersweet. We do look forward to going back to the east coast, but we will miss the friends and cherish the memories we've created here in Hawaii.

Let me backtrack a moment to share a couple of pictures from this week.

Tuesday, we went to our neighbor, Big M's promotion ceremony at the COMPACFLT Boat House. It was a really nicely done ceremony, and we were honored to sit right up front as if we were family.

Blunoz Family in the COMPACFLT Boat House

As I mentioned before, we went to our Cub Scout Pack field day / olympics on Saturday morning, and ES received his patch for completing the Historic Honolulu Hike.

(There is another historic hike you can do over on the Big Island to get another rocker that fills in the gap next to the Honolulu rocker.)

Then we went to the Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park with our awesome neighbors and friends, Big M, B, J & M. One of the water park employees took this picture.

Me and ES on the Waianai Coaster

It's not the best quality picture, especially with all the water washed out in the foreground. Still, I thought it was a pretty cool action shot with us up at an angle on the wall. (You can go to my previous post about the water park to see pics and videos of us going down the slides).

Tonight we had our farewell dinner with our same awesome neighbors. The kids chose the foreign residence of tasty flatbreads. Not what the adults would have chosen for our last dinner on the island, but the kids were kind of emotional and we didn't want to cause any more trauma.

M and ES were two peas in a pod as usual.

YB and J enjoy their pancakes.*
(*This photo is rather UNusual in that they're both sitting quitely and eating.)

We stopped by their house (across the street from our use-ta-house) to use their printer and print out our boarding passes. Both our boys LOVE dogs and wish they could have a dog, but my wife is allergic to dogs. The boys have both loved playing with Copper across the street.

ES giving Copper a hug goodbye.

Farewell Photo

I tried to get them to give each other a hug for the photo like they did for our last best-friends-farewell, but they wouldn't have anything of it.

We've been really blessed to have such wonderful neighbors in each of our duty stations. Each duty station, when the time has come for us to leave, we've had wonderful neighbors to lend us a hand with preparations for moving out. This was no exception. I wish we could be here to help them with their move out here in a few months, because they really bent over backwards to help us with our move. THANK YOU GUYS! I don't know how we would have made it through our movers, check-out inspection, and trip to the airport without you.

I'm not sure how much time I'll have to blog while we're on the road, but I'll try to post periodic updates en route to DC.

Welcome Home Steve!

My very close personal friend Steve just returned home from 380 days in Iraq.

Basically, this past year that I've been living in Hawaii, snorkeling, scuba diving, hiking, visiting Maui, visiting the Big Island, complaining about Hawaii drivers, complaining about having to wear PANTS to dinner (instead of shorts), and complaining about my detailer, Steve's been "over there" doing important work helping the Iraqi people rebuild their country.

BEFORE
Steve in Training

DURING
Steve in Diyala, Iraq

Steve understandably didn't have a lot of time to write on his travel blog while he was gone. For a good taste of Steve's awesome sense of humor, read this post (Nov 18, 2007) about his trip to Al Asad. His best post that sorta summed up what he did over there was this one (Jan 8, 2008) about his trip to Diyala, helping to build new forward operating bases near hotbeds of insurgent activity.

DURING
Steve under the crossed swords

AFTER!
Welcome Home Steve!!!

I think Kim's smile is precious. Can you tell the boys were excited to see him? God bless you guys, and thank you for the many sacrifices (and tropical storms) you have endured since Steve left.


Also, welcome home to fellow bubblehead Craig from his deployment to Afghanistan, and thanks to Amy for sharing the awesome pictures of their reunion in the airport.

Manoa Falls Hike

I have awesome neighbors.

I have an awesome wife, too, but you already knew that.

They go to extraordinary lengths to make me happy. Not only do LW and our neighbor B across the street welcome me home from work on the front porch with wine and cheese or chips and salsa with some sort of fruity tropical drink, but they go on hikes through muddy rainforests with me. There's more to come later why my neighbors and LW are awesome, but first let me give you a run down on our Manoa Falls hike today.

Manoa Falls is on a lot of local tourist guides. It's not far from Waikiki, so it's probably the closest and easiest waterfall hike for people on vacation staying in Waikiki. I've heard about it many times since we arrived on the island, but today was the first time we've gone on this hike.

If there were two things that stuck in my mind from what I've heard over the past year about Manoa Falls, then they were:
1) Popular spot where tourists leave their rental cars in the parking lot = high crime area where locals break into the cars and steal any valuables you leave behind.
2) Muddy trails, don't go when it's raining or has recently rained

First, our minds were quickly set at ease about our car's security in the parking lot when we arrived and found this:


Nowhere in any of the guides I had read did it say anything about paying for parking. However, I was happy to pay the $5 in order to have a feeling of security that there is an attendant there watching over the cars. It was a fairly small parking lot (it'd probably hold about 20 to 25 cars), so the attendant can see all of the cars from his chair at the parking lot entrance.

Manoa Falls Trailhead

Second, I was pleasantly surprised with the trail. These trails were nothing compared to the Waimano Valley hike we did back in January. Waimano Valley was really and truly MUD. The trail leading up to Manoa Falls is well defined, with a good amount of gravel and rocks, with steps and bridges made from metal and concrete.

This shows what the trail and steps were like.

I'm not saying we didn't get muddy...

YB's shoe after we got back to the car.

I thought I had seen and learned the names of most of the flowers on the island. I was wrong.

This sure was beautiful, but I have no idea what it is.
Turns out, this is a BANANA! (See first comment)

There were a good assortment of other tropical flowers that we've seen elsewhere around the island, too. [Aside: You know you've lived in Hawaii when you can name the flowers on your aloha shirts.]

I'm not sure why this picture grabbed my attention. Maybe because we've been watching the Olympics so much lately. How about this for a new Olympic sport: Synchronized Hiking?

ES and his friend M on the Trail

When we got to the end of the trail, this is what we found...



The big DANGER sign warned us about a landslide that had occurred there once before and dumped like 300 tons of rocks on that very spot.

ES checking out the waterfall.

J, ES, M, and YB had a snack at the waterfall

Family Photo at the Waterfall

My standard hike summary is at the bottom of this post.

Okay, so getting back to why I have awesome neighbors. As long as we were over on that side of the island, I was itching to go back to Azteca Mexican Restaurant for lunch (the best Mexican food on the island).

Unforunately, I was the only person who brought an extra pair of clean shoes to change into after we were done with the hike (and the boys luckily had flip-flops in the car they could wear). Everyone's shoes were pretty muddy.

However (comma), they didn't want to disappoint me and miss out on good Mexican food though, so do you know what they did??? We stopped at a gas station mini-mart and they bought some "ABC slippas" (as in flip-flops purchased at an ABC store for a buck).

B's Stylin' New Slippas

[Cue sound effect: Angelic Choir Singing Hallelujah Chorus]

MANOA FALLS HIKE SUMMARY: I know when I'm trying to decide on a new hike location, I search for an overview about the hike that will help me judge if it's doable with two little boys. For anyone else looking to do this hike, here's a quick summary:
Map: The attendant at the parking lot gave us a pamphlet with a trail map and some information about the hike. I scanned the handout and will include it at the bottom of this post.
Mileage: My GPS reception for most of the hike ranged somewhere between horrible and nonexistent (I couldn't get the geocache near the waterfall because my GPS couldn't get a fix to tell me where I was). The handout from the parking attendant says it was "0.8 miles" but I think that's one way. This website says it's 1.5 miles round trip, and I think that's about right.
Elevation Gain: Parking lot was around 500 feet, the top of the trail was about 850 feet, so total elevation gain was approximately 350 feet of elevation gain.
Terrain: Gravel and hard-pack dirt, man made metal steps. Popular gouge is that this trail is not recommended after it's been raining recently. There are a couple of moderate steep drop-offs along the side of the trail, so watch your children carefully.
Time: It took us a little under 2 hours, and we stopped to have snack time at the waterfall.
Facilities: There was a two-seater outhouse just past the gate at the trailhead. It was fairly dirty for (a) typical outhouse reasons, and (b) muddy people tramping in and out at the end of their hike. However, I give them a thumbs-up for having a hand-sanitizer dispenser in the outhouse. Normally, my boys would water a bush or two along the way, but not today because the trail was narrow and there was a good amount of traffic on the trail.

This outhouse is right after you go through the trailhead gate.

Handout Page 1: Information
(Click on image for hi-res version)

Handout Page 2: Trail Map
(Click on image for hi-res version)