Homeless in Paradise - Part 2

So what do you do when you are stuck in the most beautiful place in the world?  Here's the basic itinerary of our 8 days:

Day 1 - arriving in the evening after a long day of travel we ate and slept...woohoo!

Day 2 - hung out at the Hilton Resort.  This place is pretty amazing. They have trams and boats that transport people to the various parts of the resort.  We stayed there 8 days and spent a lot of time exploring the grounds but there were still areas of the resort that we really didn't see. Here's some picts.

Homeless in Paradise

We've been on the road since leaving Florida on July 6...23 days and counting.  It's starting to feel like we don't have a home anymore.  But now that we're on the Big Island of Hawaii, we're making the best of it.
This place is unbelievable.  Nancy and I have been lucky enough to have been able to travel to some pretty incredible places - Costa Rica, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Prattville AL - and we've never  seen such incredible diversity and staggering beauty.  The Hilton Resort that we're staying in is on the western part of the island which is pretty much all lava fields.  But when you travel to the north and east the scenery changes pretty dramatically.  The surreal, moonscape features around the Kona area start to change and pretty soon you see more high grassy areas and increasing numbers of trees and tropical plants.  I don't have any words that adequately describe how gorgeous this place is...but here are some pictures that might do the trick.  Enjoy!

Lava fields outside of Kona

Akaka Falls

Lost??

DC in AZ - Part 2

On our last day in Tucson we visited the Mission San Xavier del Bac a Spanish Catholic Mission about 10 miles outside on Tucson.  It is a beautiful, Moorish inspired design established in 1692.

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Nancy and Diana at the entrance to Nimbus

To counteract the seemingly out-of-character visit to a holy place we decided our last stop in Arizona would be the Nimbus Brewing Co.




So long Tucson...next stop - Kona!!!

DC in AZ - Part 1

Cousins!!

Next stop on the DC Tour is Tucson, AZ.  We spent time with Nancy's cousins Alex, Diana, Anna and their husbands/significant others Jimmy and Dave...and my new BFF Kaylee!  Unfortunately, Alex's partner Jeff was not able to make the trip.  Without question the highlight of the trip was our trip to Mt. Lemmon.  We spent three days and two nights in a beautiful cabin that was approximately 9000 feet above sea level.  The scenery was amazing, the weather was perfect (with the exception on a monsoon we were caught in) and the food and drink was abundant.  The pictures posted here do not begin to show how amazingly beautiful the mountain is...or the debauchery that took place while we were there!

At the top of Mt. Lemmon 9157 feet

Taken on the way to the cabin

Segway Tour

View of the Gateway Arch

Segway tour of the Downtown area of St. Louis...very cool.

Just a small sample of the great locations we were able to see.

A statue of an Olympic Runner from STL

NOT a parabola!

Painful!

The fountains in front of Union Station

More fountains

Fun math facts on the Gateway Arch:
1. The shape of the arch is not a parabola but is an inverted weighted catenary.
2..The cross sections of the legs of the arch are equilateral triangles
3. The height and width (at the base) of the arch is 630 feet - the tallest steel monument in the world.

Lantern Festival

This stop on the DC Farewell Tour is St. Louis.  We're visiting my sisters and we spent the evening at Missouri Botanical Gardens.  They are currently having a "Lantern Festival" which celebrates the art and culture of China.  The pictures show just a few of the amazing, hand-made lanterns that are in the festival.  It was pretty amazing and we hope that this is another "sneak preview" of what we'll experience when we travel in the Far East!

This is a pict of the "Corpse Flower" which is a very rare plant that has an incredibly foul odor...hence the name!

Korea and Georgia?

We're in Georgia visiting my aunt and uncle and discovered that area they live (Lawernceville, northeast of Atlanta) contains of the largest communities of Korean-Americans in the country.  There are numerous Korean businesses and if you travel on Duluth Hwy, you'll see numerous Korean Churches.

Pretty interesting...a little preview of coming attractions!

Farewell to Florida

Sunrise over the Indian River on our last day in FL.