drew’s news

This past week we hopped over to the Big Island of Hawai’i to see Daph’s cousin Chris get married. (Here’s a shot of Chris with his lovely bride Jessie.) It was a very nice, informal wedding - despite the fact that Chris had injured himself a week earlier and was barely able to walk for the occasion! The ceremony itself was conducted in a more traditional Hawaiian style, along with nice live background music provided by a great solo acoustic guitarist (which provided some comic relief as a few toddlers in attendance ran right out in the middle of the ceremony to dance along with the music!). And of course the reception followed with great food, drinks, toasts, and dancing. Congratulations Chris & Jessie, and good luck!

Leo appeared to have a really good time seeing all of the new faces and being passed around between relatives. Naturally he was pretty tired out by all of the excitement, and took two long naps during the afternoon. We all slept great that night…

We shared a nice vacation rental house in Puna with Daph’s folks and her uncle Akira’s family. Aside from the wedding, we had some good family time at the house. Since Leo was on California time, Daph & I were up bright and [too] early, so we made a 7 a.m. grocery run and cooked breakfast on Easter. Daph’s mom made dinner that night (kalua pork & cabbage!), and Akira and his wife took care of pancake breakfast the next morning. The fresh fruits were awesome! (It’s a shame we can’t get good papayas back on the mainland.) We were excited to try out Leo’s new raft in the pool - he endured it for a while, but I think the water was a bit chilly for him. But he had fun watching his cousins splash around…

While in Puna, how could we resist the opportunity to go see the current eruptive activity of Kilauea volcano? On Sunday afternoon we drove down towards Kalapana, where the highway ends in the lava flow field. A short walk from the end of the road led to a viewing area that the state had set up for watching lava flow into the ocean. A crowd of people was already gathered by the time we got there, but we found a spot with a decent view and watched the glow emerge with the setting sun. It was nice, but the thick steam obscured much of the view. In any case, Leo got to see lava!

We walked in the dark back to the car past a steady stream of people heading down to the viewing area, and as we drove away we were amazed at the number of cars! People were parked up to 3 miles away and walking from there, and it was a mess. We later heard that 9000 people showed up the first night they opened the viewing area. We were glad we came early!

We spent the last couple of days of our trip in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, at Kilauea Military Camp (KMC). Turns out there was another eruption going on at the summit (just ash, no lava), and the roads in the park were closed just past KMC due to poisonous gas and ashfall! That was pretty exciting, and we had front-row seats for the ash eruption. Luckily the wind continued to blow the plume away from us during our stay. It was a great trip, with a nice smooth flight home to top it off…