Hawaii

We went to Hawaii @the end of August and loved it..

Because it's almost Halloween, here's a spooky picture of Hawaii & a dreamy one

 Here a few things we discovered...
1.  We REALLY needed a vacation
2.  It's really just as wonderful as everyone says it is
3.  (how is this still the U.S.?)
4.  We can't wait to go back..

we stayed just outside of lahaina at this little condo resort with 2 awesome pools.  $100/nt. VRBO.com totally awesome.



we ate some great food and soaked up the sun.. went to a luau, a submarine trip, snorkeling, surfing lessons, road to hana, and spent a few good days doing nothing.. a perfect vacation


hiked to a few waterfalls, swam in a few. went through a bamboo forest, saw some amazing coastlines

(amazing coastline, from road to hana)


hiking @ haleakala national park on the way to an enormous waterfall


maui blow hole.. on our way to eat the best pineapple on earth.

july 4th

for the 4th oliver and i just relaxed. we went to a neighborhood cafe around lunch time..

desert camping

last year my sunset magazine had this article about camping in the desert near san diego and getting a tour of the night sky.. 4th of july weekend seemed like a great idea (because of the 3 day weekend), but 117 degrees.. well, that was pretty extreme.



i went with a friend from work -- we drove to the desert, met the tour group and set off in our indiana jones army bus and got a tour of the desert. . learned about different plants and homesteaders that settled the area.


the night didn't cool down.. it was sort of humid. as for the stars, we saw the international space station traverse the sky, we saw the summer triangle and a lot of constellations, the rings of saturn, and a number of nebulae star clusters. the guest astronomer was Dennis Mammana

The next morning was still humid, it started sprinkling and there were swarms of bees, and the light was really eerie. the indiana jones bus got rolling to scare off the bees and we all made a run for it and headed out.

i would definitely do this again, but maybe in the spring or fall. the company was California Overland Tours.

meetup

so there's this newish community called "meetup" where you find different groups of people in whatever area/zip code doing all sorts of things. i signed up for a few of the groups.. a silkscreen one.. a crafty one.. and a bookclub. so far, i've only done screenprinting.

pretty great, right?