tiltawhirl

Summer of Fun - week 2

We kicked off the second week of the "Summer of Fun" in beautiful downtown..Tacoma?

We went to the Museum of Glass, since it wasn't expected to be a nice day. The Museum is pretty cool, but the really cool thing to see there is the Hot Shop. We saw people making glass goblets - we must have sat there for over two hours. It was mesmerizing.

The weather was better than predicted, so we took a walk on the Bridge of Glass.

I had not been to Tacoma before - only driven by it on I-5. I was surprised - there are a lot of cool old buildings and stuff there. But, it was kind of deserted for a beautiful Sunday afternoon, except for a lot of sketch walking around. We couldn't figure out where all the good stuff was. We tried asking a girl in a deli where we would find stuff like a bike shop, record store, pizza place, coffee shop, and bookstore. She gave us a vague reference to an area about 15 blocks away. When we arrived there, it was a mostly deserted area with some closed antiques stores. If you know where the hipster action is in Tacoma, let us in on the secret.

First day in Hawaii

house backyard at night
Originally uploaded by Michelle McGee.

After we arrived in Kona on Wednesday night, my mom and Char picked us up at the airport and took us to Uncle Billy's hotel in Kailua. We wanted to get to Kona the day before we checked into the company house so we could adjust to the time change and rest after a long day of travel and not waste a day. Everyone was really tired, particularly those who came from NJ. They left at 6AM ET, flying to Phoenix and then on to Kona. This detail caused me to sing (in my head) all evening "They flew from Phoenix, Arizona all the way into Kona.." (with apologies to the Steve Miller Band).

The hotel was perfect for what we needed - a place to pass out. It was clean, convenient, and right in downtown Kailua so we had somewhere to entertain ourselves until we could check in to the house.

Even though I was tired as well, I was a little over-excited and couldn't fall asleep. At 5AM, though, I awakened to see Ryan staring out the window, eating candy. Ryan can't sleep in, mostly because he gets hungry. But at 5AM there wasn't much he could do about it.

I assumed that my mom who is an early riser at home would be awake, so I called her. Unfortunately I woke her up. But, she let me come over and sit on the bed and talk to them anyway. After that experience, I text messaged my sister Charlene to see if she was awake. She replied quickly "Yes, it is 5AM though". I later learned that she didn't have her glasses on and assumed that the message came from my niece Heather, who was confused when Charlene called her about the message.

Finally around 6AM I saw my dad walking through the hotel parking lot, across the street to some shops.

I decided to follow him. By the time I got downstairs, he was nowhere to be seen, but there was a clue. A sign, advertising a coffee shop that opened at 6AM. I followed the sign and, voila, there he was - drinking coffee.

I approached him from behind. I said "I knew I'd find you here."

I called the rest of the group and soon we all converged on the shop, drinking coffee and eating muffins. We wandered around near a sea wall behind the coffee shop, oohing and ahhing at the bright blue water, watching a giant cruise ship spinning around in the bay, disgorging passengers for a shore excursion via tender. We marvelled at the birds, little yellow parakeets, and drank our coffee. We couldn't believe it. We were all in Hawaii. The smell of plumeria flowers was everywhere.

Later we wandered over to the farmers' market in Kailua and bought all kinds of fruit to take to the house with us - pineapples, mangos, papayas. We found cute little gifts, hair elastics with kukui nuts, straw bags.

After the farmers' market we went to the Kona Brewing Company for a tour of their facility, beer tasting and a yummy lunch. Kona's Waimea Wheat was a big hit with most of the group. It used to be called Lilikoi Wheat, but since they are now exporting bottled beers to the Mainland, they were concerned that people would have trouble with the word "Lilikoi". Either way, it's a nice, fruity wheat beer.

Once we finished our lunch, we decided to head toward the house. Driving north along Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway I kept having these random thoughts. Did I do everything I was supposed to do at work to reserve the house? Had I returned all the signed liability waivers for all the guests to the person who coordinates the use of the company house? Was I supposed to have confirmed anything else? I always have these kind of last minute jitters about this sort of thing, and this time I was doubly concerned, since I had six other people with me who were expecting to stay in a beautiful luxury vacation home. What if I got to the management office and they didn't know anything about us? What if the house wasn't that great? I tried to relax and look at the passing scenery. Kona isn't known for lush scenery though - it was miles and miles of black lava flow that looks mostly like overturned earth.

When we checked in at the office and got the keys, that took care of one of my fears. And driving along the roads from the office, I started to relax. We drove past condos, beautiful golf courses, getting closer and closer to the ocean, until, finally, we reached the gate for the area our house was in.

Everyone else at work who has already been to the company's Hawaii houses tried, really hard, to impress on me that the houses are AMAZING. I saw some pictures and the houses did really look nice. But you know how it is, you assume that it's a nice angle, or the nicest room in the house. I kind of shrugged it off and figured that yes, the house would be nice. But in retrospect, really, I had no idea. It is one of those places you have to see to believe.

We wandered into the house and just sort of staggered from room to room. Every so often, from far away you'd hear a familiar voice say "Oh my God" or "Holy crap". I found my way into a room and was uncertain how to get back to the kitchen area. There were fresh flowers everywhere. In every room, all the walls to the outside slid completely open to let in the fresh air. The floors and walls were all marble and granite. The ceilings were all beautiful wood. The kitchen had every conceivable appliance and gadget, all top of the line.

Speakers in every room let you play music throughout the house and adjust the volume in each room. Wireless internet was available throughout the house and the yard. I'm kind of glad I didn't bring my laptop though.

Each bedroom had an enormous dressing area, a sunken marble tub, a TV with surround sound, and a lanai. Each room opened onto the backyard, where there was a hot tub, a swimming pool, beautiful landscaping with tropical flowers and amazing views of the beach and coastline. Stairs led down to a beach, where the water was smooth as glass and the sand was golden.

Once we were done running around like idiots, we all convened in the backyard for a swim. Char put together a list of stuff to get at Costco and we headed back toward Kailua to get supplies. We loaded up the cart, mostly with booze. We got back to the house and got everything put away before throwing some hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. I mixed up a pitcher of mojitos, Mom had a margarita made with the last of some very nice tequila previous occupants of the house had left behind.

We struggled to stay awake until Ryan's parents arrived around 10PM but it was rough. It had been a long day. It was fun though, when they arrived, to see them see the house and be as surprised as we had been just a few hours before.

I fell asleep and listened to the wind rustling in the palms. I couldn't wait to get up the next day.

To see the full set of photos from the trip, go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/michellemc/sets/72157600229011473/

Mai Tais on the flight from Seattle to Maui

Mai Tais on the flight from Seattle to Maui
Originally uploaded by Michelle McGee.

The flight from Seattle to Maui was delayed by several hours. We didn't mind much, except that my mom was meeting us at the airport in Kona after their long flight from NJ. Coming in late meant several more hours awake for her.

We had a nice flight though. There was this odd guy seated in front of us, along with his seemingly normal girlfriend. He was unreasonably concerned about his hair, and what the headphones he was wearing might be doing to his hair. He was watching something on a personal dvd player, and laughing hysterically. The thing that seemed weird about it was that he never said anything to his girlfriend about what was so funny. I can't imagine sitting next to Ryan, laughing my head off and not telling him what was so funny. Instead, he only took the headphones off every so often to ask his girlfiend about his hair, and complain that the headphones were rubbing all the "product" off.

The weirdest thing is, we swear we saw him on the flight home, except he was alone. I guess it is not that surprising, though. While we were deplaning on the flight out, someone asked the girl if they were getting married in Hawaii and her response was "Oh, God, no."

the long way home

we left worland on Thursday for the two day drive home.

It had been snowing for a while when we left, there were a few inches of snow on the ground already when we headed out around noon. As we headed north through Wyoming and into Montana, the snow gradually tapered off, and there were only spots here and there with packed snow and ice on the road.

it was pretty clear on I-90 most of the way as way headed west. We stopped in Bozeman to fuel up and caffeine up.

The coffee at Rockford Coffee in Bozeman was really good. I decided to see if they had any of their coffee for sale, to bring back for my friend Audrey who checked in on the house for us while we were gone. It turns out that their coffee is from Caffe Vita here in Seattle. Their coffee is great, but I guess it didn't make much sense to bring some home, in a "coals to Newcastle" kind of way.

We drove on to Missoula where we stopped for the night.

The next day we got on the road at 9. With that early start, plus the extra hour from returning to the Pacific time zone, we cruised through the rest of Montana, Idaho, and Eastern Washington to get over Snoqualmie Pass before dark.

Christmas pictures

Some of these I've already posted, but here's our full set of Christmas trip photos.

http://www.flickr.com/gp/37912399@N00/x0PUh0

Mom at Rialto Beach

Mom at Rialto Beach, originally uploaded by Michelle McGee.

I finally spent some time clearing out my 1GB compact flash card, which had photos on it that were as old as last Christmas. This included some photos from my family's visit during the summer, when we went to Olympic National Park.

See the rest of the photos at:

http://www.flickr.com/gp/37912399@N00/z7H1S1

ryan's birthday/christmas eve

sunny and cold, a nice day for a walk.

we listened to some football games on Sirius satellite radio, since this is Broncos country and if you are interested in the Bears game, as my father-in-law is, or the Seahawks game, as we were, you're probably not going to get it on tv.

we took a walk, then went to church at 5.

christmas eve is also ryan's birthday, so after a great birthday dinner, ryan opened birthday presents. nellie helped.

my parents sent him these legging things for riding his bike in the rain, but clearly he failed to read the instructions.

rob told a joke, but kathy decided since she had heard it before that she should cover her ears. unfortunately for rob, we found this more amusing than the joke. not that it wasn't funny, of course.

in wyoming

our first day here was a quiet one, doing some of the stuff we hadn't gotten to before leaving - laundry (since there was no power), wrapping gifts (also not much fun in the dark, especially if it's too cold to be out of a sleeping bag).

it started to snow that first afternoon, and we got just an inch or two, enough to make it pretty but not so much as to make things difficult. here's a picture of the main street in Worland, complete with an inch or so of christmas snow.

Nellie enjoys the snow quite a bit. When she gets out in the yard she does "fast dog", meaning she runs around like the hounds of hell are chasing her. Every so often she stops suddenly, spins out, spraying snow everywhere, pauses, then changes direction. I call these her "spy dog" moves.

the next morning, in addition to the snow, there was a beautiful frost on all the trees.

kathy and rob's house, all snowed up for a white christmas.

holiday trip - day two

more driving, most of it in montana, where only recently they changed the speed limit back to 75mph from the vague "reasonable and prudent", because I guess most people can't handle that kind of freedom. 75mph felt just barely reasonable and prudent most of the day, since there was just a little bit of snow, so we were just fine with that.

We stopped in Butte, MT to look for coffee and pick up a few things. Still no Starbucks, and the GPS said the closest one was 212 miles away(!) We asked the cashier who helped us at the Wal-Mart where we could get coffee and she seemed nonplussed as to why we would want any, or why we didn't drink it at home like normal people. We wound up getting coffee at the gas station. The first cup I poured looked like tea, so we moved on to some sort of foamy "cappuccino-like" machine. It wasn't great, but it was caffeine.

We reached the Wyoming border just before nightfall, dropping down through Laurel, MT then through Bridger, MT, then Frannie, WY, to Lovell, WY, to Greybull, WY, and Basin, WY, before fiannly arriving in Worland, WY - our destination!

They had nice Christmas lights across the road in Basin. Kind of hard to photograph in a moving car at night but you get the idea.

holiday trip - day one

We left for Wyoming on Wednesday, a few days earlier than planned, mostly because the power was not predicted to come back on at our house until Friday or Saturday. But, on Tuesday night, as were were packing to leave, we heard our long dead appliances and furnace spring to life. The power was back!  It wasn't like the lights all came on or anything, since we were in bed when the power went out 5 nights before, but you could feeling the hum of the electricity coursing through our house's veins. Our lifeblood! Television! Internet! Video games! Of course, the first thing I did was vacuum. I almost didn't care that the cable was still out. I was just glad to have heat. I slept better that night than any night in recent memory.

We decided to leave as planned anyway, since we had made arrangements with our jobs, made hotel reservations for the night we were planing to spend on the road. Plus, another storm was forecast for the Seattle area, and would make getting over Snoqualmie pass later in the week possibly a bit more difficult.

So, we set out on Wednesday morning, with Nellie in tow.

Snoqualmie Pass was clear and dry, coulnd't ask for much better.

Eastern Washington is markedly different from the western side of the Cascades, where Seattle is. It's much drier on that side. It's kind of cool. There are a lot of wineries and stuff on that side as well.

 

Ritzville, WA. Fancy name, but we couldn't find the Starbucks the exit signs promised.

We passed this truck, loaded up with broken looking electric power equipment, probably all from our area.

It was night by the time we hit Idaho, and drove through the Idaho Panhandle into Montana in th dark. We stopped in Missoula for the night. Something about being in Montana made me want a steak for dinner, so Ryan and I split a really delicious steak from room service before tucking in for the night.