Two very quiet days in Honolulu
Spending 2 nights in Honolulu (October 17th and 18th) was a last-minute change to our itinerary that was necessitated by the tragic fires in August that completely destroyed Maui’s cruise port, Lahaina. Our only plan was dinner at a place that’s very special to us, and that’s really all...
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A brief look at Kailua-Kona
On October 16th we were docked at Kailua-Kona (usually just called Kona) from 8:00am until 6:00 pm. Unlike our busy 2014 visit when we rented a car and went to Kona Joe Coffee and Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park (see “Exploring Kona, Hawaii“), we had no plans and...
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A drive from Hilo to the summit of Maunakea
For pretty much forever, I had 3 bucket-list things to do in Hawaii. The first, and perhaps the prompt for the other 2, was to watch the sun rise from the summit of Haleakala. That was accomplished in May 1972, a few days after getting married in the old...
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A bucket-list helicopter tour of Kauai
This was the first visit to Kauai for both Cathy and I, and since we booked the cruise I’d been dreaming of doing a bucket-list flight along the Na Pali coast. Cathy booked us with Ali’i Air Tours, in a Robinson R44 with the doors off. She was only...
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To Hawaii on the Koningsdam – 5½ days at sea
Imagine living in a small community – 3,600 or so residents – which has great music venues, bars, and restaurants, a spa and many other facilities. Now imagine that in that community, you’re one of the 2,600 people that are retired, and the other 1,000 residents do all the...
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A cruise detour – to Astoria, Oregon
I don’t know why it’s done, but as with our Hawaii cruise in 2013, we made a detour to spend a day in Astoria, Oregon. This post isn’t going to tell you much about Astoria, but on the 2013 visit I spent a very busy day exploring – see...
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Starting a cruise to Hawaii- getting from the Yukon to the sea
We’re now on Day 8 of this trip, which features a 17-night cruise from Vancouver to Hawaii and back on Holland America’s Koningsdam. Often we book trips at least a year ahead but we just decided about 3 months ago to book this, after a lot of discussion about...
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A summer of septic field construction and landscaping
My regular readers will have noticed that I didn’t go very far from home this past summer. What began as a simple (but very expensive) replacement of our complete septic system turned into a major landscaping project which lasted the entire season. The main component of the landscaping is...
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16 exercises to keep you flexible over the winter
I found these graphics this morning in a Facebook post from 4 years ago. I’m posting this so I have it handy, because these are important poses and stretches to keep your body working correctly – I’ve used many but keep forgetting about them. I need a poster, but...
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Getting high on Grey Mountain
I’ve started a couple of blog posts since my last one but have been unable to complete them and finally gave up on each and deleted them. Maybe I can finish this one. Although we haven’t had any hard frosts yet and daytime highs are still 10-12°C, Fall is...
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