{"id":4091,"date":"2007-08-15T16:36:29","date_gmt":"2007-08-15T23:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2007\/08\/15\/aloha\/"},"modified":"2019-12-20T15:31:26","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T23:31:26","slug":"aloha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2007\/08\/15\/aloha\/","title":{"rendered":"Aloha!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:5827,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/hiltonwaikoloavillage.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.hilton.com\\\/en\\\/hotels\\\/koahwhh-hilton-waikoloa-village\\\/&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:5828,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/hiltonwaikoloavillage.com\\\/activities\\\/dolphin-quest.asp&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:5829,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.nps.gov\\\/havo&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20101010102455\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.nps.gov:80\\\/havo\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 14:57:25&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 05:22:47&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 08:21:27&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 08:21:27&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Well, all worries aside, we made it! Right now, I&#8217;m sitting in our room on the sixth floor of the <a href=\"http:\/\/hiltonwaikoloavillage.com\/\" title=\"Hilton Waikoloa Village\">Hilton Waikoloa Village<\/a>&#8216;s Lagoon Tower, looking out over Waiulua Bay. Stepping out onto the deck, I can look nearly directly down into the <a href=\"http:\/\/hiltonwaikoloavillage.com\/activities\/dolphin-quest.asp\" title=\"Hilton Waikoloa Village: Dolphin Quest\">Dolphin Quest<\/a> pool, where people (with a <em>whole<\/em> lot more expendable money than we have) are swimming with dolphins. Not long ago, I was snorkeling along through the resort&#8217;s lagoon, surrounded by schools of fish, diving down to get a closer look at eels, pufferfish, and parrot fish, and sidling on up to pat a sea turtle&#8217;s shell as it nosed through the spray of a waterfall.<\/p>\n<p>We may never stay someplace this ritzy again, but boy is it a treat to be doing it now!<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The flights in were actually pretty good. We went from Seattle to Maui, then a short hop to Kona. Both flights were pretty smooth, with just a bit of turbulence here and there, but nothing to really get the heart racing (which is <em>fine<\/em> by me). The landing in Kona was one of the smoothest I can remember, too &#8212; so smooth, in fact, that we didn&#8217;t even realize we were landing until the tires hit the runway. Pretty cool!<\/p>\n<p>We picked up our rental car, found the hotel, and checked in around 11pm here&#8230;which, of course, was about 2am Seattle time, so we were pretty zonked. The car got handed over to valet parking (we were tired and we&#8217;d never done it before, so we figured what the heck), Prairie&#8217;s dad L came down to meet us and give us a basic idea of where everyone else was, and then we hid in our room and ordered room service. After some food and a short torchlit walk around the grounds, we crashed.<\/p>\n<p>While we wanted to sleep in this morning, the time zone change bit us and we ended up waking up at around 8am Seattle time&#8230;around 5am here. Eventually we admitted that we wouldn&#8217;t be falling back asleep, and decided to just get up and start exploring before breakfast. We ran into L outside the room, and the three of us went down to watch the dolphins play in their pool for a bit. A bit more wandering around (during which time we got to feed and pet a sea turtle that was hanging out near the edge of part of the lagoon), and then we met the rest of the wedding party for a breakfast buffet. All of Prairie&#8217;s family I knew, all of P&#8217;s family I was meeting for the first time &#8212; and so, true to form, all their names have already completely vacated my head.<\/p>\n<p>After breakfast, we all went down to the lagoon for some snorkling, one of the things that Prairie and I had both been looking forward to a lot. The lagoon is huge, and we got to see quite a bit of different kinds of fish as we paddled along, eventually tracking down the sea turtles over by the waterfall. After a few minutes we decided to swim back to where everyone else was and grab the underwater disposable camera we&#8217;d brought down, then swim back to get some shots of the turtles. I took a couple underwater shots as we were on the way&#8230;then about halfway across the lagoon, the toes on my right foot started cramping. As I tried to paddle extra hard with my left foot to keep afloat while grabbing my right foot in pain, my <em>left<\/em> foot started to cramp up too. This left Prairie to try to collect my flippers (which I&#8217;d ended up kicking off) and the camera and try to help maneuver me back to shallow water, and the strain of trying to manage all that made her kick a little oddly and gave her a charlie horse in her leg.<\/p>\n<p>Once back to shallow water, we decided that it was time to call a halt to the day&#8217;s snorkling. A bit of a pity, as I only got a few shots off on the underwater camera, but we&#8217;d had over an hour of snorkel time, which was <em>far<\/em> more (and more strenuous) than we&#8217;d ever done in the pools at home, which was probably what triggered the cramping. Instead, we spent a few minutes in one of the freshwater pools to rinse some of the salt off, then came back up to our room to shower and rest for a bit.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m about to head down to start being &#8220;the photographer&#8221; for the day&#8217;s wedding activities, beginning with H&#8217;s hair appointment. There should be a bit of a break after her hair is done, then the wedding is at six this evening, with a reception to follow. Tomorrow morning, we&#8217;ll be checking out and heading on to part two of our Hawaii vacation &#8212; camping at one of the beaches and hiking around in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nps.gov\/havo\/\" title=\"Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park\">Volcanoes National Park<\/a>. I&#8217;ll update again if I can (and if I feel like it), but as I doubt there&#8217;s much in the way of &#8216;net access at the campgrounds, we may be back in Seattle before I check in here again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Right now, I&#8217;m sitting in our room on the sixth floor of the Lagoon Tower, looking out over Waiulua Bay. Stepping out onto the deck, I can look nearly directly down into a pool where people are swimming with dolphins. Not long ago, I was snorkeling along through the resort&#8217;s lagoon, sidling on up to pat a sea turtle&#8217;s shell as it nosed through the spray of a waterfall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-4091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}