Adventures of a Midwestern Girl in Sunny, Sunny California

Sunday 11/18
You know how your knuckles feel when you sprain a finger and it gets all swollen? Right at the joint there, you can’t quite bend your finger, and the swollen fleshy bits touch each other more quickly then they normally do? That’s how my butt feels.
Today, we went for our horseback ride [...]

Saturday 11/17
As I mentioned yesterday, Steve loves the lava tubes. There is a big old, pay-to-get-in lava tube in the Hana area that we were thinking about hitting before starting out on the road Saturday morning. Unfortunately, it didn’t open until 10 am and we were out and about by 9 am. Instead, [...]

Friday 11/16
“But wait,” you say. “I thought the road to Hana was on Maui, not Kauai.” And you would be right, my friend.
It all seemed to make such good sense at the time I was planning the trip. And, honestly, it did make sense. We got up around 4am on Friday [...]

Thursday 11/15
I swear, these are the last sunrise pictures of the trip. After this it’s all sunsets. : )

Thursday was the day to re-visit the Waimea Canyon. We had gone on our last trip to Kauai, but there are so many great hikes, we had to go again. Last time we [...]

Wednesday 11/14
Our ziplining tour with Princeville Ranch Adventures was the first of three big tours I had planned for our trip and I had thought long and hard about it before booking it. I was intrigued by the concept of soaring over rain forests, and I do love a good roller coaster, but I [...]

Tuesday 11/13
Up with the sunrise again, it was another beautiful morning.

Today, Steve and I decided to drive along the north side of the island to take in the sites there. We started by trying to hike to the Pools of Mokolea, following the instructions in “the book”, only to discover they seem to have [...]

Steve and I just returned from a two-week vacation in Hawaii. It is my general feeling that it isn’t too wise to write that we’re on vacation on my public blog while we are actually gone, particularly when it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to deduce where we live. Just asking for trouble [...]

A couple of weeks ago, Steve and a took a mini-break in Gold Country. We have a big, much-needed and deserved vacation planned for later this year, but we’re both tired and stressed and thought a quick 3-day weekend would help tide us over until the later trip. Besides, some friends had been [...]

Could someone please explain how I could live in Marin County for 8 years and never have hiked the Tennessee Valley Trail before? How did I miss this one? Other than the obvious answer that Steve and I don’t get the chance to go on hikes very much.
But this weekend was different. [...]

Steve and I headed down to southern California last weekend for a long overdue visit with some friends and with my grandfather. We had been talking about taking this trip for several months but had never quite managed to plan it; trying to coordinate a visit with several parties can present logistical challenges. [...]