Turtles and coral and lava, oh my!

Last week, I didn’t post on my blog because Eddie and I were celebrating our 15th Anniversary on (mostly) sunny Hawaii.

It didn’t look like we were going to bask in the sun much on Monday when there were torrential rain showers all day. To top it off, I broke the coffee maker carafe so we spent a large portion of the day driving from store to store to find a replacement.

However, Tuesday dawned beautifully sunny and we went to an excellent snorkeling beach. I wanted to see turtles, and see turtles we did. We first swam out to see one basking in the sun on a rock near a reef. The tide was out and you couldn’t really swim over the coral, so I ended up stepping on more than I should have (bad me, I know). It did pay me back by exacting a payment of quite a bit of my skin. Ouch. We then got to snorkel and see an amazing amount of fish and coral and anemones, and then as we were getting out, we saw another turtle enjoying snacking right near the beach. He actually swam towards us, and Eddie got some photos of him underwater and then we watched him for quite awhile. We also found another one on our way to see a beautiful small church with an incredible etched glass window of St. Peter and Christ on the water

Wednesday, we went to the volcano – it’s quite a long drive there. I won’t say that many people drive slowly in Hawaii, but there are actually MINIMUM speed signs. Anyway, we drove around Crater Rim Drive, saw the caldera and steam vents, and then went down to the active Lava flow. On our way, we stopped and saw Petroglyphs.They are just all over the rocks a small hike in, and are amazing. Since the lava was coming through underwater tubes into the water, you were unable to see active flowing lava, but the steam from the water was beautiful. We (ok, I) declined to walk out too far on the fields, but we took incredible photos and had some binoculars and could see quite well (this photo was taken through the binoculars).

Thursday was our actual Anniversary, and we spent the morning walking around Kona’s downtown, even getting to visit the Farmer’s Market. We found a great restaurant and had a lovely dinner overlooking the water. Did you notice my hair gets frizzy in the humidity?

Friday, we mostly puttered around the condo cleaning it, and then flew out to Honolulu to catch the red eye (very well named, by the way) to home. Tired and happy we arrived home on Saturday to find the kids had had a great time with my mom.

A huge THANK YOU to my mom for watching the kids, and for my boss who provided the condo as well as our dinner out on Thursday. And, to all of you who kept us in your prayers as we traveled, it was much appreciated.