Haiku

Illegal
Hikes like Haiku Stairs
Rock my world

We've only been traveling for 3 weeks and already our trip has reached such extreme levels of epic-ness that Danielle has decided to make a stamp of the word "epic" so we can stamp all of our most epic experiences in our various journals. That way when we come home at the end of the year and return to our normal, mundane existences we'll never be able to forget the extremity of our bizarre new lifestyle.

The most epic of all our epic days was Tuesday Feb 1 to Thursday Feb 3. It counts as one day because we really didn't sleep much in between. It started out kind of normal. We spent most of Tuesday on the beach and in the BYUH library, catching up on facebook, pampering our beloved blog and futilely trying to plan our stubbornly unplannable romp through Asia (unless you are my mother, in which case EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL). We left Laie around 9 p.m. planning to camp for the night at Bellows so we could get up early and beat the crowds to Hanauma Bay. Unfortunately our permit had expired before it was even issued. Thanks Satellite City Hall. The military guard at Bellows pointed to the discrepancy and turned us away.

It was getting late, and it seemed pointless to drive all the way back to the northshore to sleep and drive all the way back in the morning, so we decided to sleep in the car again. We spent an hour circling the area trying to find a hiding place for our car that was unobtrusive enough to prevent cops from noticing but close enough to the cops to prevent other sorts of people who hide from cops late at night from noticing. Being homeless involves a very delicate balance.

We found an ideal spot across from the beach park next to a high fence on a residential street. Once again Danielle stretched out in the back while I reclined the front passenger seat, and we slept about as well as you can expect to sleep in an economy car in a strange neighborhood waiting for cops to come knocking at the window.

The next morning we got up with the sun and realized we were next to one of the most beautiful beaches we'd ever seen, so we walked around for a bit before putting on our swimsuits and driving towards Hanauma Bay, where we spent a perfect Hawaiian day.

A scenic overlook on the way to Hanauma Bay

I want to put a house on this island

We rented snorkels and followed around schools of brightly colored fishes and perpetually indifferent-looking sea turtles for an hour or so, then laid out on the soft sand. When we had been there long enough to acquire funny looking tanlines (especially Danielle, who got tiger stripes on her derriere from her flashy bikini), we drove to Honolulu and got curry at our new favorite Thai restaurant.

We were feeling so refreshed from our relaxing day at the beach (and annoyed at the idea of spending another night in the car) that we decided to stay up all night and hike the Stairway to Heaven. We found a Walmart and morphed our sweet travel shirts into clubbing attire (what can I say? Danielle's a genius), used beach grime to style our hair, and spent the evening in Waikiki dancing with some very fun Chilean boys at Senor Frog's. As someone who doesn't go clubbing very often and doesn't have anything to compare Waikiki's nightlife to, I don't think I can adequately express how much fun we had that night so you'll just have to take my word for it when I say it was awesome.

We left our new friends around 3:30 a.m. and drove to Kaneohe, where we loaded up on caffeine, called my incredibly tolerant friend Ryan at 4:45 a.m. for directions, stumbled through a bamboo forest, hopped a fence laced with barbed wire and manure (we found a lot of amateur booby traps along the way), and began our ascent.

All I can say about the hike was that it was EPIC. See for yourself.

Pre-dawn

Slowly getting lighter

Almost to the top

Getting close...

Boom! The sun's up

I got a lot of shots of Danielle's back...

We reached the first landing just as the sky started lightening, and got to the very top in time for a brilliant sunrise. Then we ran down the stairs as fast as our shaking, sugar and caffeine crashing, sleep-deprived legs would carry us to avoid the awkwardness of blatantly walking back to our cars in front of the security guard who arrives at varying times every morning.

Our last stop was the STD clinic. Somehow Danielle had managed to avoid her routine Hepatitis B shots in high school, and the oversight hadn't been caught before we left Colorado. Luckily my mom had found a clinic in Honolulu that offered free Hepatitis B shots to "at risk" groups, and with the huge bags under our eyes, matted hair, and heavy day-old makeup we certainly looked the part. We stared at the small TV in the waiting room like zombies as it played a high school drama promoting the use of condoms on repeat for an hour and a half, got the shot, and somehow managed to drive back to the northshore before crashing on the beach. Not a bad way to spend 72 hours.

(Actually Written by Jessi)

Hilo Hanakahi and The Wild Hawaiian

It began halfway across the Pacific ocean, when our neighbor sitting in the window seat began vigorously shaking Danielle awake, shouting "You won! You won!"

The flight attendant suddenly appeared and handed her a CD, the prize for winning a competition to guess the exact time the plane would be halfway to Honolulu from San Francisco. Being a mathmagician, Danielle had naturally computed the time down to the second. As he gave her the CD, the flight attendant had told us, "This is GREAT date music!!!"

We decided that the 4-hour mini road trip we were taking to Volcanoes National Park would be the perfect time to screen Danielle's prize. As we drove away from Kailua in the early morning light, we popped in the CD, hoping for some lovely background music, and were instead assaulted with a bizarre array of experimental sounds. I'm not sure what kind of social travesty that flight attendant normally subjected his dates to, but "The Wild Hawaiian" was definitely not romantic. We finally found a song that we liked on the sixth track, titled "Hilo Hanakahi" - laid back, rhythmic and vocally intriguing. We didn't understand the words, which were all in Hawaiian, but we felt ourselves relaxing into the soothing melody....until we noticed that there was a lunatic screaming in the background before each new verse. The crazy man would bellow "HILO!!!" And then the lead singer would softly follow with, "Hilo Hanakahi I ka ua Kanilehua..." Then the first man would scream, "PUNA!!!" and the vocals would follow with "Puna paia `ala I ka paia `ala i ka hala..."

We imagined a wild-haired man gesturing nonsensically and screaming from the top of a smoking volcano, or a drunk uncle trying to get on stage with the band at a wedding and half sing/half scream lyrics he didn't really know. We listened to that song on repeat for four hours, crying our eyes out laughing the entire time. Check out the youtube link to the song if you want to listen in.

This is how we imagine the Wild Hawaiian.

The Land of Death and Dinosaurs and NAR NAR!!

Upon driving through Volcano National Park, near Hilo, the landscapes seemed to speak to me. They seemed to have a wild and dramatic past. As is something big used to live here.


As we turned the bend and looked out over a great, vast expanse of fire rock with smoke rising from the ground I realized THIS IS DINOSAUR LAND!!!


This is me in Dinosaur Land.

I made a naturalistic sketch to document my findings. I drew it how it would have looked in the time of the dinosaurs.
Jessi said that the islands were created relatively late in the earth's history and that since it was after the jurassic period dinosaurs probably never lived on these islands.
Don't worry I didn't believe her. You should not believe the nay sayers. She will see soon that this really is Dinosaur Land.

Now I will prove without a doubt that dinosaurs lived here.

Proof:
It is so obvious!! Just look at these pictures, how could they not have lived here?

Plus I found these seismographs which must have documented the movement of the dinosaurs, since the ground shook when they walked (cause they were so big). You can see that they were everywhere.


Q.E.D.

There now you have proof. But it looks like Jessi still has a doubt. It must be because she thinks the trees are too small for Dinosaur Land.I thought this at first too, but then I realized that the ground was black everywhere and that the dinosaurs must have burnt them all down when they left, so this small tree is just a new baby tree growing back. However, I will prove that this is dinosaur land again, since I said I would prove it "without a doubt", which is even more than just a normal proof.

Proof #2:
These are dinosaur colors. Orangey, Firey... implies DINOSAURS!!!!
Q.E.D.

There, Jessi looks satisfied. Now that I have proven it with out a doubt I will go on.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The HOT FLOWING LAVA

It started out innocently enough: two Colorado girls wanting to see some lava. But apparently that's easier said than done. There were plenty of boat, land and air tours but they all charged at least $100 per person, and by the time we decided we might need a guide most of the good ones were booked. We called a few friends, and a few friends of friends, who all had vague suggestions but nothing concrete. We consulted our guide books, which said that despite warning signs meant to imply it was forbidden, it was actually legal (although not particularly advisable) to walk right up to the lava. We even called the lava viewing hotline for advice, but that just connected us to a recording of a woman saying, "The lava is clearly visible from the viewing area." The map at the Volcanoes National Park said the viewing area was an hour and a half drive from the park, up Highway 11 and around the section of Highway 130 that had been covered with lava, so we decided to start driving in that general direction and see what came of it.

We stopped at a gas station to pick up an extra flashlight and water (see? We're perfectly competent at planning our excursions), and started following a large van that was obviously full of tourists with their guide. They turned onto Highway 137, so we followed them until the road ended at a funky outdoor bar. We had hoped to slyly follow the guide to wherever they were headed, but unfortunately it was a Japanese tour and we definitely stuck out. Plus they were walking super slow. We later found out that this was just a stop on their way to the real viewing area, but at the time we decided push past them and start our hike. We saw the smoke from the lava as it flowed down the mountain to our right, so we followed a semi-marked path to the beach and then set out over the black, solidified flows towards where we imagined our goal to be.

Danielle pointing at a fascinating rock formation

Pretty clouds

We weren't really aware how long this hike was going to take, so we took a ton of leisurely pics of the cool trees growing out of the black ground and the dramatic landscape

See the cute little tree!!
Hey look! More rocks and cracks! Let's take more pictures!!!

The black sand beach being formed by the 1980s-present flows was amazing, and I was excited to finally see a black beach. So we stopped for a good fifteen minutes to wade and take yoga-pose pictures.

As the sun began to set, we finally realized that we were tourists with no map, no sense of direction, and still no lava in sight, and maybe we should hurry up. When we started out there had been a handful of other groups wandering in the same general direction, but by twilight it was just us and 4 fifty-somethings a little ways ahead of us. When he noticed us trailing them, one of the men casually said, "I hope you don't think we know where we're going." "No, we're just hoping that if we follow someone, they'll fall into the lava before we do," I replied, only half kidding. We learned that our new companions had grown up together in South Dakota before moving to one of the Carolinas and then on to Florida. They were very personable and kept us laughing as we walked over the rocks. We saw several "Keep Out" and "Danger" signs, but we assumed these were the signs our guide book was referring to and chose to ignore them.

After walking for about an hour, we saw a man sitting under a large tarp watching the sunset. Danielle and I cautiously approached to ask for directions. By this time we had wandered away from the shoreline and could see a stream of tourists walking toward the lava on a road several miles up the mountain from where we were, and we had a sinking suspicion that we had followed the Japanese tourists to the wrong parking lot. The man was very friendly, and told us that we could either go to the viewing area where we saw all the other tourists and view the lava from a carefully marked containment zone, or we could walk another half-hour along the beach and see the lava flowing into the ocean at a spot where only a few guided tours went. Naturally, we chose the more awesome of the two options. But he warned us to stay near the shore and give the houses a wide birth because there were "land dispute issues" and people might make us turn back if they saw us. It was this warning that prompted Danielle and I to jump into a rock crevasse, duck and cover when we heard a woman calling out to the four Floridians (who were trailing us by a few hundred feet). But she, too, was very friendly and directed us even closer to the beach. Just as the last light of day faded and we were forced to get out our flashlight, we reached the rocky shoreline and saw a faint glow in the distance.

We walked up behind a small crowd, looked over a precarious ledge and there it was! Hot, flowing, molten rock, barely ten feet from where we stood, hissing and darkening as it met the ocean. We couldn't believe our luck. A few hours of random wandering had brought us to the most dramatic natural display we'd ever seen.


We took a few photos that we could post on facebook to show everyone how cool we are.

Yeah, I'm holding a fireball. It ain't no thang.

Danielle the enigmatic lava breather

After being mesmerized by the swirling magma for at least half an hour, we wandered a little further up the hill to where a tour guide was teaching his daring guidees to poke the volcano with a stick. Apparently paying a few hundred dollars to a punk local kid gives you immunity from the lethality of HOT, MOLTEN, LAVA. I feel like LAVA should always be written with the caps lock on.

Here's a video of the human sacrifices...er...tourists who hired a "guide".




We'd had such good luck with the other locals along the way that I decided to ask the stick-poking guide how we could get home safely, since we hadn't really followed a trail and it was now pitch black. Realizing we hadn't come with a guide, he made a big show of scolding us about trespassing on private property, and told us we could follow the coast but said it was dangerous and if anything happened to us we were responsible. We apologized, and explained we had followed a bus to the wrong parking lot and missed the viewing area. In hindsight I should have expected this reaction. Altogether our little group would have profited him an extra $1000 or so that night. Although I'm pretty sure we were safer with the Floridians.

We gathered the rest of our party and began the long trek back to our car. We found a path along the shore to follow, which cut our walking distance down considerably. One of the Floridians was a former firefighter, and he forged ahead to find the safest route. He was followed by the two women in the group, his wife and his brother-in-law's wife, and last came the brother-in-law, who had stepped in a small hole and gashed the front of his leg on the sharp volcanic rock and was walking in a wobbly way that made Danielle and I nervous. We hung out in the back with him, hoping we could somehow catch him if he started tottering near the edge of the cliffs we were walking along.

It was a surprisingly pleasant walk, given how late it was, the fact that we didn't really know where we were going, our fatigue, and our empty stomachs. Everyone was still awed by what we had just seen. Every now and then the Floridians would say something like, "Wait until our grandkids hear about this!!!" One of the women noticed we only had one flashlight and took my hand to guide me over the rougher terrain. Toward the very end of the hike it began to rain in heavy sheets. We finally arrived at the adorable outdoor bar around 9:30 that night, five hours after we'd started out. We felt very close to the Floridians after the extreme experience we'd shared, although we'd only known them in the dark and probably wouldn't recognize them if we saw them again. We said a sad goodbye and wished them well on the rest of their trip. After giggling to ourselves about how fortunate we'd been, we started the truck and headed to Hilo, where we spent the night in the parking lot of the only 24-hour cafe on the island.

Here's some more sweet LAVA videos.