Upon leaving Kim’s parents’ we took the greyhound down to Fort Lauderdale where Chuck and Joan picked us up. It was great to spend a few days with them, especially since I’ve never visited them before. Joy was home but Chucky was away in Jamaica. We went to the beach in Fort Lauderdale, cruised the beach in Miami, and went out on Chuck’s mom’s boat in the canals. We ate out a few days, and one place really deserves mentioning. I forget the name but it’s on Kim’s blog, and they served ice cream in mountainous proportions. It was a busy fun few days. I even managed to rescue their computer from a bunch of nasty viruses. Tuesday morning Chuck dropped us off at the airport and we said hasta luego a los Esados Unidos.

After the ceremony everyone headed inside for drinks before dinner. It was really cool to get a glass of wine and be in the middle of all the historical exhibits. For dinner we sat with the usual crowd of Jacob, Waleska, Travis, Lucy, Thien-An and his new girlfriend CJ. Betsy, Wes, and Thao were there too but at a different table. We all ate a lot.

After dinner we went to check out the dance floor and I don’t think anybody was dancing so we started to. I got to dance with both the bride and the groom. I’m certainly not used to following. Thien-An went home early. The rest of us headed to Jacob’s for a little while after the dancing for a small after party, but we were all a bit drunk and it was really late so it didn’t last too long.

Travis and Lucy spent the night with us and we lounged around the next morning. Kim and went to work and we went to see the movie Stardust, which was entertaining, then they went home. Quite a nice weekend. And almost done with work…

I haven’t been writing much the last few months, but I’ve been keeping busy with more lindy hop dance classes and working on Kim’s cookbook application. I’m really enjoying programming web apps and hopefully it’ll be something I can do when I return. But really, where does the time go? It’s already July of 2007?

Last weekend Kim and I went with Laura back to Newport for the rodeo. Kim’s first rodeo. We spent quite a bit of time at Doug Knapp’s on the river. He rented a school bus to drive us back into town for the rodeo, then to Kelly’s for some hometown drinking, to a gas station for a late night snack and finally back to the house on the river. That was a lot of fun. I saw a lot of old acquaintances at Kelly’s, including kinda drunk gradeschool teachers. That was fun and odd.

On the way back home we stopped at lake Chelan and went to a few wineries. We’ll have to go back there sometime, because that’s a nice little down for a summer wine tour.

During the day Chito took us to work with him at the California Museum and showed us around behind the scenes. A LOT of the museum exhibits seem to be motivated by Maria Schriver, California’s first lady and wife of the governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Money and power sure do give you a lot of opportunity to change what people focus on.

The rest of the day we’d mostly lay around in parks and rest. Kim was still recovering from a nasty cold, so she’d sleep and I’d take photos of squirrels with my snazzy 12X zoom. Squirrels are incredibly funny to me for some reason. The park behind the Captiol building was a nice one.

One night there Brendan picked us up after work and we spent the whole evening cooking, eating and talking in his new house with his new roommate. We made soup with lots of veggies and artichokes. Californians are lucky for their long seasons of fresh produce.

The next day we saw Sacramento’s old town area which is kind of touristed up to look very old and has a lot of shops. I think it’s odd with the two major rivers that go through Sacramento that very little of the city seems to make use of them by being built close. Anyway, after that we laid down in another park until Brendan was off work and ready to leave for Yosemite.

I don’t think there will be time to throw a goodbye party for the house we’ve lived in the last 2 years since people are moving in on the 24th, but it’s been a good time, and hopefully the house will continue to be a good one to own. See y’all on Capitol Hill.

We hiked all the way in to Kalalau in one day. That was a hard hike. It’s only 11 miles, but it’s all up and down, often along steep, very tall cliffs. It was a beautiful hike. The trail isn’t nearly as well maintained after the 6 mile mark, which has the last pit toilet before Kalalau. We thought about camping there, but we got there early and the camp spots aren’t that cool. At one point we followed a bad side trail, and were about to turn around and go back to find the right one when some crazy guy hiking in barefoot told us we were on the right path. Turns out he was wrong, but he lives out at Kalalau and didn’t seem to mind leading us up crazy streams to get back onto the trail.

We got into Kalalau right at sunset, and didn’t get to see everything before the sun went down. There is no way I would ever want to hike that trail in the dark, even with big head lampst. We setup camp and ate. We were both exhausted and a little beat up. I found the waterfall at the end of the beach to wash up. This waterfall is probably the best part of the camp. It’s refreshing, fresh, beautiful water that’s perfect for a shower. There’s even pipes people have modified to make nice showerheads. Kim waited until morning.

The next day we setup the hammock and just lounged on the beach all morning. It was heavenly. I wish we had budgeted more time, because we decided that we needed to start the hike out that day to avoid doing the whole thing in a day again. It was a smart choice, but if I ever go back I’m spending at least a few days at Kalalau. We hiked to the 6 mile camp, Hanakoa, setup the tent, and took the valley trail to see the waterfall. The path to the waterfall is okay to follow with daylight, but you’ll get easily lost if you try to do it at night. We almost did since we were hiking back right as the sun was going down. We were within 300 ft of the camp and totally lost in the dark. Kim suddenly developed amazing navigational skills and got us back. We cooked in our tent because the bugs were pretty bad.

The next day we did another side hike to Hanakapi’ai falls, which turned out to be one of the most enjoyable waterfalls of the trip. We could swim under the waterfall and behind it. We got there and were the only ones there since we hiked through a torrential rain storm while others took shelter. We were already soaked so figured why bother. After enjoying the secluded spot for a little while, a few dozen people showed up and took over. We then left.

It felt sooooo good to get off the trail after 3 days of hard hiking. Especially since we knew we had a timeshare in Poipu for the next week where we could live civilized for a little while. On the way down we stopped at the Taro festival in Hanalei as it was ending. We discovered that Poi could be very tasty if prepared well, and that we wanted more Kava.

We checked in to the Lawai Beach Resort, which we got a screaming deal on thanks to Kim’s parents time share membership. We got a week with our own small apartment for $300! We could cook our own food, sleep in a bed, shower regularly. Ahhhh. It rained very heavily the first few days, so we took it easy. We drove around the area, and went to a few timeshare presentations. By going to these silly presentations we got screaming deals on later events.

One of those events was a boat tour on a Zodiak boat. We got right next to a group of spinner dolphins, including a baby. We beached on some remote beach and had lunch and snorkeled. We took the boat in a sea cave and it was a beautiful day the whole time, which was great because it had poured like crazy the days before.

We also went to a luau. It was at one of the upscale hotels, I forget which one. It was fun to be all you could eat and drink, but the entertainment wasn’t that amazing. I think I liked the fire dancers best.

We spent a day exploring the Waimea Canyon area. It was overcast and drizzly most of the day, but very pretty. We didn’t hike down into it because of the weather and how slippery the trails were.

Another benefit of our time share time was a half off helicopter tour. It was pretty amazing. Kim had never been in a helicopter before, and I hadn’t been since Alaska. It was sweet to see all the places that we had been by land and sea, now by air. When we went up it was crystal clear too. The pilot said it was the clearest he had seen in probably 3 or 4 months. The only downside to this is that at the end of the ride there’s a place where if it’s raining there’s waterfalls all around you on the rainiest spot on earth. No rain that day.

After about 10 days on the island we checked out of our timeshare and headed back to Oahu for one more day in Hawaii before home.

The big news though is that Jacob and Jesse both got engaged this past week! Not to each other though. To Waleska and Deborah respectively. It makes me very happy to know this. Weddings make such fun parties and I’m looking forward to theirs.

Christmas Eve we went to dinner where Kim was working. Kaspar’s isn’t normally open as a restaurant, but they host fancy occasions there and we were supposed to get half price meals since we were family of Kim. Somehow they ended up covering all but $9 of the meal. We didn’t want to ask why they didn’t cover the last $9 when we were already getting such a great deal, but it is strange.

We played cards and my dad helped me work on the roof. I gave the family copies of the photos that I had scanned so far. On Tuesday Kim and I went back to work and the family departed.