Bandit and Moose are at "Grammy and Pappy's"(Moose's breeder) in Alvarado, TX and Hilary and I are watching the waves in Kailua-Kona on the big island of Hawaii.
While Hilary was in Dallas, I was having a blast in Pueblo, Colorado with 2 of my best friends, Max and Ross. Below is a picture of Max (holding our near perfect score card), Ross and I. We played golf at the Desert Hawk Golf Course in Pueblo West, where Max and his wife Lindy and their 2 girls live.
While in Colorado, we all three had a BLAST! The ride home on Sunday was 100% not very much fun. For some reason, none of the three of us felt like our normal selves that day. It rained on Ross and I a little as we drove back to Amarillo so I could make a flight to Dallas. I made it to Amarillo just in time to make my flight. Thanks for toughing out the whole NASCAR ride back, Roscoe. I flew into Dallas Sunday night and stayed one night with Hilary at her parents' house in Plano. Monday morning, Rick (Hilary's dad) got up and took us to the airport.
Also on Sunday, Hilary took Moose and Bandit to Grammy and Pappy's in Alvarado. Bandit may end up thinking he is a Rottweiler by the time we get back. There are 28 dogs at Gail and Ray's house, not including Bandit and including the newest litter of 7.
This is a pic of Bandit running around with Lacy, Zussy, and Dakota...they seem just his size, don't they?
Here is Bandit with Lacy, Moose's mom.
The picture above is Bandit hanging out with Pappy and the rest of the gang.
Above a pic of Bandit having some conversation with a couple of Gail's other Rottweilers, I would bet a paycheck that he is barking at them. See when there is a fence involved, Bandit seems so very brave...don't we all.
And one last pic above of Bandit with his 2 new roommates, absolutely hilarious I thought.I know, I know where the &*%$ are the pictures of Hawaii??? Hilary and I have had a GREAT time so far. We flew in to Honolulu on Monday afternoon around 4:00 p.m. (Hawaii time) which was 9:00 p.m. Texas time. The flight to Honolulu was not as bad as we thought it might be. Some people just about had us convinced we needed to pack a week's supply of dry food. It was long, but we made it, no problem. After the flight to Honolulu, we caught a plane from Honolulu to Hilo, on the big island. By the way, there were not many "puddle jumpers" at the Honolulu airport, we were on a Boeing 717 from Honolulu to Hilo, I think. The plane was 5 seats wide, kinda like the American Airlines "barbie jet" from Lubbock to Dallas, or other pretty short flights, just a little bit bigger. It was raining when we arrived in Hilo. The Hilo airport was probably the most open air airport I have ever seen. Rental car booths outside, baggage claim outside, I am not even sure that we were inside right when we got off the jetway. It wasn't too uncomfortable, though. It was humid, but the humidity is a LOT less miserable at 76 degrees.
Hilary managed to take 1 picture on the flight from Honolulu to Hilo.
We rented a jeep to drive while we are here and we went to check in to the hotel.
This is a picture of our hotel in Hilo.
This is a picture of one of the many trees around our hotel in Hilo. They had all these really strange branches. I've never seen anything like it.
This last picture was one of the sun setting on Hilo. It was amazing how the beam of sunshine seemed to single out the city, very pretty. We ate at several REALLY cool places in Hilo and I attempted to make Andrew Zimmern proud, eating what the locals eat and trying things that made Hilary wonder what I was thinking. I had a Loco Moco at one place, it had a beef patty, fried eggs, brown gravy, and rice. They have all sorts of varieties of this local favorite here on the big island. I also had tripe stew, at the waitress's suggestion at Ken's house of pancakes in Hilo. Hilary had pancakes at one of the places and they had guava, pineapple, and coconut syrups. She really liked the guava and pineapple syrups.
The main reason why we stayed in Hilo was to make it to the Kiluea volcano. This was so cool.
I will put some pictures of that later on, but before we went to the volcano, we made a couple other stops. First we went to the Mauna Loa macadamia nut factory. At this place, they have every variety of Macadamia nuts you could imagine. They had some that were garlic and onion flavored, some that were covered in chocolate and some that were honey roasted, believe it or not they were all equally delicious.
Hilary and I toured the factory, although there wasn't a lot going on, the area was absolutely beautiful and had plenty of free samples. We had a great time. After we went there, we headed to the rainforest zoo. This was really cool also.
There were wild chickens running around outside of the zoo when we first arrived.
When we first walked in, we were greeted by Max the parrot you see above. I would swear he said "HELLO!" when we first walked up and neither of us were looking directly at him, but despite my best coaxing with the world's greatest parrot impersonation, "HELLO? HELLO? HELLO!" there was no more banter from Max.
The flowers, trees, and everything else growing in the park was AMAZING!!! The first huge thing we noticed were these lilly pads. They were huge, probably 2 feet across, I have never seen anything like that in my life.
Hibiscus grow like shrubs here, seriously they grow like a hedge and they trim them the same way you would a shrub or hedge. I am sure the locals think Hilary and I are crazy, since we have been stopping in random places and standing, staring, mouths wide open at these unbelievably beautiful flowers.
Next we met Namaste, a white tiger. He had this habit of taking every visitor there for a walk. I watched him do it several times. As people walked up near his enclosure, where he was sitting right against the fence, he would get up to greet them and then walk about 200 feet, always watching to make sure the people were following.
There were a few more parrots like this blue one above. They were all very friendly and didn't seem to mind all the people gawking at them.
There were more unbelievable plants and flowers than you could count. There were lots more animals, but their cages didn't make for very good picure taking. There were a pair of giant anteaters, a bearcat, some deer, and a bunch of monkeys and capuchins and stuff.
The orchids also grow wild here, the big island is also called "Orchid Isle". These were in the butterfly house, our last stop on the way out of the zoo.
There were a LOT of butterflies in this little screened in hut thing at the exit of the zoo. We stopped and took a few pictures of the monarch butterflies, and some of the flowers growing in the butterfly house.
I think I have to give Hilary credit for the picture above, I am not sure what this flower is, but again they just grow EVERYWHERE.
One last flower picture that Hilary took on our way out of the zoo. Our next stop was the volcano national park.
We stopped at the visitor's center on the way in, pretty cool stuff. They showed a short film that told all about the history of the formation of the islands and also about safety in the park (everyone walked out during that part) tourists are so SMART. We stayed since this whole thing intrigues me to no end.
Our next stop was a couple of steam vents. This is when the ground water gets so hot underneath the ground's surface that it boils and the steam rises up out of the earth. It was not something you see everyday and kept my interest for about 27.2 seconds. Onward....
Our next stop was Kilauea Caldera, the picure you see above was taken from a VERY long way away. Next we went to another little museum up in the park. They had all sorts of crazy information about the volcano and some things that measured the volcanos activity. They had a little pen that was going CRAZY, it looked like a lie detector or something.
It was really hard to walk around anywhere near Kilauea where the old lava was. The rocks were really sharp and the terrain was extremely uneven.
We followed the lava all the way down to the ocean, where it was flowing in to the ocean and giving off HUGE plumes of smoke and steam. The waves crashing up against the lava here was absolutely picturesque, we stayed for several minutes and watched the waves battering the lava.
There were several places where the waves had made little caves like the one you see above.
We followed the road as far as you could drive, down to where the newest lava was going in to the ocean and then walked the rest of the way to where the lava had flowed over the road. Then we walked out on the lava flows as far as they would let you to see all that we could.
The vog (volcanic fog) was so bad they wouldn't let us go down where the new lava was coming out. The pic above is where the new part of Hawaii is being formed by Kilauea.
All of the lava was very different, some was very glassy and smooth (like what Hilary is standing on above) and other parts of it were very jagged and pourous and almost sharp to the touch. The entire trip back to the front of the park reminded me of Jurassic Park. It was so pristine and almost surreal it was all so HUGE. It was really unbelievable, but it was hard to get good pictures because of the vog. I think Hilary is going to post more on the blog later. I think for now we are about to go find some more sea turtles....more about them later =)....Heath
Planoette reunion!
The Morris Fam
