Sea Kayaking in British Columbia - The adventure begins

Saturday, July 11th
The alarm goes off at 5:30, and as I sit up bleary eyed, as I always do whenever I wake up, the first grey of a summer morning is already beginning to lighten the sky. We packed late the evening before, so all we have to do is get dressed and cart our luggage out to the rental car in front of my sister’s house.
Even this early on a Saturday morning the traffic is moderately heavy as we approach the toll gates for the Oakland – San Francisco Bay Bridge. Our $4.00 is taken by the man in the tollbooth without comment to a proffered “Good morning!”, and we keep pace with all the other cars flying along at 15-20 mph over the posted speed limit. The top two thirds of the towers on the suspension side of the bridge are invisible in dense low lying fog as we thread the maze of splits and off ramps and successfully negotiate our way onto Highway 101.
We turn in the rental car, collect our luggage, and trundle on down to wait our turns for the thrill of going through security. It’s not especially a thrill for us; only the minor inconvenience of taking off shoes, emptying pockets of loose change, extracting the laptop from its case and the camera from the backpack, but the stainless steel parts of Jane’s artificial knees invariably set off the alarms when she walks through the security gate. The thrill is for the security officers, who suddenly look more alert. More than once I’ve seen smiles of satisfied self-importance as they usher Jane to a nearby glass booth to begin the ritual of the waving of the magic wands as she assumes a wide stance and stretches her arms out to the sides while the guard confirms that there really isn’t a bomb hidden in either of Jane’s legs.
Once through security and we have collected and repacked scattered belongings and put our shoes back on, we head down the long corridors to the waiting area. We stop to buy some breakfast from one of the vendors that feel justified in charging at least triple what any reasonable person would pay for comparable items anywhere else. I extract a slightly stale cinnamon bun from its clear saran shroud, only to find that it has been baked with about three times too much sugar to be palatable. Perhaps that explains the treble price. I take a few bites just to have something in my stomach before I set it aside. I mistakenly assume that at least the coffee will be good. If you find the bitterness of quinine, combined with a hint of slightly burned plastic and the acidity of mild heartburn then you would have labeled the coffee delicious. My coffee cup, still mostly full, followed the remains of the cinnamon bun into the trash can. At least I had a good book to read while we waited for our flight to begin boarding.
The climb up through the fog into brilliant sunshine lifted my spirit as well as my body, and I sat in the window seat wit my head turned as far as it would go to the left to watch the ground far below and the anti-solar glowing point with the tiny shadow of the plane in the center racing across the countryside to keep up with us. It was exactly 10:00 a.m. as we passed over Redding where we had been just a few days before, and I could see the city’s famous Sundial Bridge, the Sacramento River winding through town, and Shasta Dam where the river’s falling waters turn the turbines and generators that provide power for much of northern California.
As we descended into the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, dysphoniously tagged with the name “SEATAC”, I was impressed with how the waters of Puget Sound embrace the edges of the city. During our long layover we had the chance to explore this city within a city. There are several thousand residents, all transient, either scurrying between concourses and flights or providing food, shopping, security, ticketing, custodial, and transportation services to others.


It was a short half hour flight to Victoria, whose airport is about a half hour drive north of the city at the edge of the charming waterside town of Sidney.
Our friends Sabra and Gayle met us for a mellow dinner on the outside terrace of a restaurant at the water’s edge looking out across the Haro Straight to the San Juan Islands, and far beyond, Mt. Baker in the State of Washington.

Click here for a video of the flight and the trip on Vancouver Island

Running In the San Francisco Bay Area - July 8th & 9th

Wednesday, July 8
My sister and her husband were fortunate enough to have bought a house in Oakland BEFORE real estate prices went crazy. They have lived there many decades, and have always extended their hospitality whenever we have visited from Virginia. While visiting this July I have always started my training runs from here.

This morning I headed up the gently climbing road toward the Golden Gate Avenue intersection that everyone for miles around just calls "The Big Tree". Ocean View, Acacia, Cross, and Golden Gate all crisscross here, and slightly offset from the middle of the intersection stands an old eucalyptus tree whose trunk must be at least six feet in diamter. It appears unchanged since I saw it daily from the Key System bus I rode to Tech High in the mid-1950's. Actually, it is a bit less full, since virtually all its leaves and most of its branches were burned away in the Oakland firestorm of 1991 that laid waste to over 1,500 acres and burned 3,354 single-family dwellings and 437 apartment and condominiums to the ground. It took several years before The Big Tree, its root system still intact, was able to grow enough new leaves to look normal. Today it appears pretty much the same as if it had never been burned.

My next running challenge was the long steep hill of Broadway Terrace. It climbs straight up the slope toward the top of the ridge, and before I had gone a block I had to slow to a shuffle, and then to a walk. I followed the old bus route, through the neighborhood where I had a paper route so long ago that I remembered one customer who had invited me into the house to see the newfangled television set they had just purchased so that they would be ready to receive TV signals when the first TV station in San Francisco, KGO-TV, was completed and began broadcasts for four hours a day!

As the street leveled out I was able to resume my run along Moraga Avenue toward the old firehouse. It was closed long ago, but I can still remember the shiny brass pole just inside the main doors, and seeing the firemen slide down it to the waiting trucks. I always thought that it was cool that the roof of the firehouse was made to look like there were flames coming from the peak.

The firehouse is right next to Montclair Park which used to be a dark swamp. The WPA - Works Progress Administration, formed to create jobs for the unemployed during the Great Depression, built stone walls, paths, terraces, and a nice duck pond. The weeping willow trees that used to grow all around the pond are gone, as is the tunnel under the embankment where the Sacramento-Northern trains (also long gone) used to run but the park is still pretty, and well used.

The train tracks may be gone, but on the opposite side of where they used to be is Montclair Elementary School where I attended kindergarten through sixth grade. In fact the "temporary" portable classroom where Miss Milne taught me in 4th grade is still there 60 years later, and still in use.



A couple of blocks away is the Montclair Shopping Center. When I attended Montclair Elementary School, the shopping center had a big horse pasture next to the park, and several streets were still undeveloped vacant lots with water-filled sinkholes. La Salle Avenue, the main street, still look pretty much the same even though virtually all the stores have changed.

Heading back past the school down Mountain Boulevard toward my sister's house again I jogged past the quaint slate-roofed cottage that is the Montclair Library. Mrs. Glover the librarian has long ago gone to her reward, but I still owe her a debt of gratitude for encouraging my interest in books that has lasted me a lifetime.

The last point of interest on this nostalgic run was Lake Temescal, which long before even my time served as the water supply reservoir for the City of Oakland. It has been part of the Oakland Parks for many decades, and this is where I learned to fish, and spent many long summer afternoons hanging out at the beach and playing on the floats at the swimming area. Very early one morning in September when the air was chilly, the water still warm, and a thick layer of fog hung over the lake, Paul Maxwell and I, riding our bikes from Montclair to school at Clarement Junior High School stopped for the thrill of skinny dipping in a forbidden part of the lake.

By the time I had completed the loop I had put more than six miles of pavement under my running shoes.

Roaming Near Redding - 3

July 5th

Click here for the video

After a leisurely Sunday breakfast, the three of us climbed in the pickup and headed out of Redding. Not far from town Bruce turned off on an unmarked dirt road and less than a quarter of a mile later pulled over to the side and stopped. We could see that there was a deep gully ahead with a narrow wooden bridge across it. We walked to the bridge, and looking down saw rushing water cascading from an upper pool down over jagged rocks at the bottom of the chasm. We made our way cautiously down through scrubby underbrush and jumbled rocks as near as we dared to the edge of the dropoff, and admired the cataract of Montgomery Creek Falls.
I was reminded of the Robert Southey poem that I was required to memorize in my high school drama class because to read it you had to exercise breath control:
The Cataract strong
Then plunges along,
Striking and raging
As if a war waging
Its caverns and rocks among:
Rising and leaping,
Sinking and creeping,
Swelling and sweeping,
Showering and springing,
Flying and flinging,
Writhing and ringing,
Eddying and whisking,
Spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting,
Around and around
With endless rebound!
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in;
Confounding, astounding,
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound.
Collecting, projecting,
Receding and speeding,
And shocking and rocking,
And darting and parting,
And threading and spreading,
And whizzing and hissing,
And dripping and skipping,
And hitting and splitting,
And shining and twining,
And rattling and battling,
And shaking and quaking,
And pouring and roaring,
And waving and raving,
And tossing and crossing,
And flowing and going,
And running and stunning,
And foaming and roaming,
And dinning and spinning,
And dropping and hopping,
And working and jerking,
And guggling and struggling,
And heaving and cleaving,
And moaning and groaning;
And glittering and frittering,
And gathering and feathering,
And whitening and brightening,
And quivering and shivering,
And hurrying and scurrying,
And thundering and floundering,
Dividing and gliding and sliding,
And falling and brawling and sprawling,
And diving and riving and striving,
And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,
And sounding and bounding and rounding,
And bubbling and troubling and doubling,
And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,
And clattering and battering and shattering;
Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,
Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,
Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling,
And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,
And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,
And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,
And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping,
And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;
And so never ending, but always descending,
Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending,
All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar,
And this way the water comes down at Lodore.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OK, now take a breath!


Back on the highway, a short drive and a few miles off the main road again, we cruised through French Gulch, a booming mining town during the California Gold Rush back in 1849. The town was named for the French Canadians that mined gold there during the gold rush. Located on the Oregon Trail, it was the largest of northern mines. During it heyday it boasted 4 saloons, 2 hotels, a post office and 2 mercantile stores. Today the population hovers right around 100.

We turned toward the town of Weaverville, and after climbing and curving for awhile along the sinuous road we dropped down into a narrow valley, crossed the Trinity River on an old steel truss bridge, and came to the center of Lewiston, another booming mining town in the 1850's. It faded almost into a ghost town, but now has a population of about 1300. The old buildings from the gold rush days include a restaurant in the old stage coach stop where we bought marvelous hand made milkshakes. Across the street is antique shop in the mercantile store where ancient glass-tank gasoline pumps recall the earliest days of automobile travel.





Our last stop of the day before heading back to Redding was at the old Taoist temple in Weaverville.





Bruce and I both bought bamboo flutes as souvenirs of our roaming near Redding

Roaming Near Redding - 2

Saturday, 4th of July

We got an early start on Saturday morning. We drove to the Ahjumawi Lava Springs State Park, a vast grasslands region that was the ancestral homeland of Pit River Indians who have lived in the area for thousands of years. We walked along the banks of clear sloughs, wishing that we had kayaks to explore further. Off to the north we could see the flanks of Mount Shasta looming in the distance.

This was a day for roaming. Only a few miles away is the tiny town of Cassel, home of Packway Building Materials. Business there during the snowy winter months is slow, so the owners entertain themselves in their spare time making giant welded metal scuptures.The cast of colorful characters on Cassel Road includes a dinosaur, dachshund, goose, fish, snowman, penguin, skier, ant, chicken hawk and rock man. The first one they built was a 40 foot long,16 foot tall, five ton big blue dinosaur, based on the Packway Materials logo. Its body is a Readymix drum and part of another one. Chutes from a concrete mixer were for its neck. Its head is a gasoline tank and the tail is part of a sawdust collection system from a sawmill. The most intimidating sculpture however, is the giant ant.


From there we traveled on to the spectacular McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park. The park's centerpiece is the 129-foot Burney Falls, which is not the highest or largest waterfall in the state, but possibly the most beautiful. Teddy Roosevelt once described Burney Falls as the "eighth wonder of the world". As we descended the short walk down to the bottom of the falls we noted that every few feet lower, the air temperature dropped another degree or two, and by the time we reached the base of the falls the temperature had dropped from over 90 to a cool 65 degrees!

We found another cool escape from the day's heat when we made a stop to get out a flashlight and explore Subway Cave, an old lava tube formed when hot molten lava cooled and solidified on the surface, but kept flowing beneath the ragged crust. As the flow diminished the still liquid lava drained away, leaving an empty rock tube that with a little exercise of imagination could remind you of a subway.

We reached Mount Lassen in the early afternoon, and drove the circuitous road around the mountain that climbs to about 8,000 feet. The three of us left the pickup truck in the parking lot at the base of the trail that leads to the summit, and walking slowly to accommodate to the thinner air, started climbing the dusty gray pumice rock path, pausing every few minutes to catch our breath. Jane stopped to sit on a rock and enjoy the view at about 9,000 feet, and Bruce and I continued higher.

Another hour's climb brought us, still a thousand feet below the summit, to a 45 degree slope with a patch of very icy snow a hundred yards wide. A narrow ledge had been hacked out of the snow, and people had managed to inch their way across this treacherous stretch, but the day before two people had lost their footing and gone spinning and sliding down the steep incline for 1,500 feet down the mountain. One had escaped with serious cuts and scrapes, but the second had hit his head on a rock, and had to be carried out on a stretcher several miles to a spot where he could be airlifted to a hospital by helicopter. We weighed the risk against the goal, and decided not to try to reach the summit. We jogged most of the way back down, reaching the bottom in less than half the time it had taken to climb to the 10,500 foot level.

By the time we had driven back to Redding we were all pretty tired. About the time we were seriously thinking about sleeping, we heard deep thumps and distant explosions. Climbing to the upper balcony of the motel, we were able to watch a wonderful fireworks display. A perfect end to an adventure-filled Independence Day!

Roaming Near Redding - 1

Friday, July 3rd
It's a little over 200 miles from Oakland north to Redding, California, and the small rental car zooms comfortably along at 70 on the east side of San Francisco Bay. We cross the Carquinez Bridge at the north end of the bay, top the ridge, and leave the cool air behind. The Central Valley is always hot and dry in July, and the rolling hills have taken on their tawny golden summer hue. Dark green California live oak trees are scattered randomly across the slopes, and parallel paths along the hillsides worn by wandering cattle look like contour lines on a map.


Skirting east of Sacramento on the Winters Cutoff, we have all the car windows open, and the blast-furnace roar of hot air around and into the car recalls to my mind all the trips across the valley to Lake Tahoe in the old family 1941 Pontiac, back when there was no such thing as car air conditioning. As we get closer to Redding, far off in the distance we can see the outline of the dormant volcano Mount Lassen.

After some lunch with Bruce we headed north again for about an hour and a half. Bruce and I worked until near sunset, excavating and laying the forms for pouring a concrete pad on the property near the town of Dana. By the time we finished and drove the few miles to Fall River Mills, it was close to 9:00 p.m. The stores were all closed, but the old Fall River Hotel dining room was still open, and we enjoyed a wonderful dinner.

Running in the San Francisco Bay Area - Thursday, July 2nd

Although my jetlag is fading, I still woke up this morning around 6:00 a.m. I dressed, drank some water to hydrate, grabbed a double handful of trail mix, and headed down the hill from my sister's house.

Jogging down upper Broadway, I passed Oakland Technical High School where I graduated in 1957. When new strict codes were enacted to make building safer in earthquakes, none of the high schools in Oakland met the standards, and several were torn down. The city spent several million dollars on well-hidden reinforcements to Tech, and the school still stands as beautiful as it was over 505 years ago.

I made my way along sidewalks through downtown Oakland, dodging people in business suits toting briefcases on the way to work, and all the way down to Jack London Square, which overlooks San Francisco Bay. There are several really good seafood restaurants here, a hotel overlooking the water, an and the dilapidated old Heinhold's "First and Last Chance Saloon", where the writer Jack London used to hang out. It still does a thriving business.


I cut over a few blocks and ran past the old building on 4th and Jackson Streets that used to to be Safeway Stores corporate headquarters. My Dad was head consulting architect there, and got me my first real job there running a blueprint machine and filing all the architectural plans for every Safeway Store.


Now heading uptown, I ran for awhile along the side of Lake Merritt. Originally a shallow tidal lagoon that opened into the estuary between Oakland and the Island city of Alameda, by the mid-1800's it had turned into a convenient cesspool for Oakland's sewage. Samuel Merritt, Oakland's mayor was responsible for pushing through an initiative that diverted the sewers elsewhere, and cleaned up the lake. Although the water level in the lake still rises and falls with the tides, it is now surrounded a beautiful park.

Finding my way back to Broadway I headed for my starting point. I was pleased that I had done the first 3.1 miles in only 28 minutes and passed the 10k mark at 6.2 miles in one hour and 6 minutes. Slogging along, I began to run out of steam, and stopped at a neighborhood grocery across from Tech High for a bottle of fruit juice. It didn't revive me as much as I had hoped, and I slowed to a walk for the last mile and a half. Still, I was pleased that although my marathon training schedule had called for 3 miles today, I had completed 10 miles and even with all the walking had averaged four point seven miles per hour

Running in the San Francisco Bay Area - Wednesday, July 1

I missed my Tuesday run. We were getting packed and running last minute errands, then flying from Richmond, VA to San Francisco, California, and the flight attendants don't approve of any attempts to run three miles using only the aircraft aisles!

My internal clock woke me up late, Virginia time, but it was only 5:30 in Oakland. I tried to go back to sleep for a half hour, but gave up and got out of bed at 6:00 a.m. I put on my running shoes, shorts, and shirt, and trotted down to College Avenue.
Turning north, I jogged past Claremont Junior High School (now Claremont Middle School), on past the boundary between Oakland and Berkeley, and past the Elmwood, and old neighborhood theater that is still thriving.


Soon I reached the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, and ran past the campanile bell tower that chimes the hours and whose carrilon bells still provide daily concerts.












Then across campus past Dwinelle Hall and out through Sather Gate on Telegraph Avenue.











Although it was still early, the sidewalk vendors were already setting out their wares...jewelry, leather goods, incense, tie-dyed shirts, and other handicrafts, making jogging along the sidewalk more like an obstacle course.


By the time I'd made my way back to College Avenue and back to my sister's house, I'd covered 6 miles.

Chasing Adventures at Age Seventy-One

At the ripe old age of 71 I've decided that it's never too late to be young! Five weeks ago I started, along with about twelve-hundred other people all younger in years than I, to embark on a training schedule designed to prepare for the Richmond Marathon. Each week you run on your own on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and participate in a group run on Saturday mornings. Sunday is for other exercises. Each week between June and the race in November is a bit more challenging, working up to the goal of completing 26.2 miles. I think I can do this!

Hawaii = Day 12

Saturday, November 8

We ate raisin bread toast and coffee fixed in the room for breakfast and checked to make sure that we had packed everything back into bags to load in the trunk of the car. We left this charming old-style Hawaiian lodging with some regrets that the stay was over, and met Janet Arizumi at her house at 9:30.

The three of us drove out of Hilo, slowly climbing up the long gentle flank of the Kilauea volcano, stopping along the way at an outlet that offered literally hundreds of different varieties of orchids.



Turning off at the tiny town of Volcano, we located the bed & breakfast imaginatively named The Tara Firma Inn, and dropped our luggage before continuing on to the entrance of Kilauea National Park.

We ate a leisurely lunch on the terrace at Volcano house overlooking the huge Halema’uma’u caldera, the main crater of the Kilauea volcano. Within this miles-wide crater a new 180foot by 200 foot crater has recently opened, continuously spewing a column of noxious smoke containing choking sulfur dioxide and caustic sulfuric acid droplets so poisonous that the downwind section of the crater rim road has been closed off as hazardous to your health.


We explored the upwind side of the caldera, stepping cautiously through clouds of mist where rainwater seeps into the ground until it encounters rock hot enough to vaporize it and force it back through pores and cracks to emerge again as steam.

Sometime in the not too distant past, red hot liquid lava, gushing out of a volcanic rift near the top of the mountain had poured down the slopes, cooling as it flowed until a solid crust formed on the surface. Beneath the jagged black surface the lava continued its rush downward, and when that eruption slowed and stopped, the melted rock drained out of its huge self-made pipe, leaving an empty tube. Empty lava tubes like this exist near the surface in many places on the flanks of the volcano, and we made our way for some distance through section of the Thurston Lava Tube that was lighted. If we'd had flashlights we could have explored for at least another quarter of a mile underground.



Just a short distance from the Volcano House we walked along the Desolation Trail. Here, in November and December 1959, a spectacular fountain of glowing lava had jetted fifteen hundred feet into the air at the side of the Kilauea Iki crater.



Now 49 years later there is still a lot of barren cinder covered land, but trees and plants are beginning to recover the surface.



We drove down the Chain of Craters Road that used to go to the oceanside town of Kalapana. Lava from Kilauea flowed across the road and buried it in 1969. It was reopened ten years later, but continuous flows since then eventually completely covered seven and a half miles of road, and it remains a dead end.















We ate dinner at the Lava Rock Café, an unpretentious neighborhood restaurant with good food in the town of Volcano, and lingered for awhile close to the wood stove that took the chill off the mountain air at the Tara Firma bed & breakfast before retiring for the evening.

Hawaii - Day eleven

Friday, November 7

Jane’s 70th birthday adventure: A Trip to the Mauna Kea Observatories


After breakfast we drove to Janet Arizumi’s house, where she introduced us to her neighbor, Mr. Tanaka, who works for Subaru Telescope. His job involves maintaining the equipment on the infra red sensor that can be attached to the telescope. He spends much of his time in an office in Hilo, but makes the trip to the summit three or four times a month. He joined us in our rental car, and we drove up the Saddle Road, turning right onto the road that leads to Mauna Kea.

We stopped for an hour at the Elison Onizuka Space Center, acclimatizing there at the 9,000 foot level for awhile before driving a few hundred yards farther up the mountain to the place I’ll call the Mauna Kea Village, a place where people who work at the various telescope facilities at the top have dormitories, a cafeteria, offices, etc. We signed release forms acknowledging the risks inherent at traveling to very high altitudes, put on sweaters and jackets, and transferred to an official four wheel drive Subaru Telescope car (no, it wasn’t actually a Subaru!) so that Mr. Tanaka could complete the drive to the summit.

Just beyond the village, the paved road ends, and the washboard surface takes a noticeable change in pitch, becoming much steeper. Very quickly the last stubbly vegetation disappears. As we looked out of the car windows we could easily imagine ourselves on the surface of Mars. The volcanic soil in many places is a vivid red, and large chunky rocks like scattered across the surface. I think that here, as on Mars, the larger rocks were deposited simultaneously with smaller rocks, cinders, and dust. Over a long period of time the finer material gets blown away, leaving the big rocks sitting on the cindery surface, looking as if they had been carefully placed there.

The road twisted and turned, zigging and zagging back and forth through a series of hairpin turns, skirting large cinder cones that bulged up a hundred meters or more above the main steep slope of the volcano. In some spots the edge of the road was marked with big lava rocks that had been placed there, but in other places only a small lip of piled up cinders showed the edge of the road where the ground dropped away at a 45 degree angle. The rear end of the car occasionally fishtailed a bit as the wheels bounced around on the loose bumpy surface, diverting our attention briefly from the spectacular vistas opening below us.

White fluffy clouds embraced the top of Hawaii’s active volcano Mauna Loa, but farther down the slopes, many miles away, we could see veils of grey smoke rising above the surface along a line from the summit to the sea where lava has been flowing continuously for more than two decades. Visible off in the distance was the thousand foot high column of steam where the hot, viscous lava pours into the ocean. Half hidden by puffs of low lying fair weather cumulus clouds, the top of Haleakala on the island of Maui showed its head in the distance, the intervening miles turning it blue.

The air temperature hovered just above freezing as we climbed out of the car at the base of the Subaru Telescope, the powerful winds making it seem even colder. We hurried for the door. Inside we were given yellow hard hats to wear while visiting. At about 14,000 feet it is not wise to move anywhere quickly. After just a few steps, Jane was feeling dizzy, and sat on a bench while Mr. Tanaka went to get a portable oxygen tank that could be worn on the belt, and tubes that ran up just underneath the nostrils. That worked well, and we proceeded to the floor of the telescope to see the working end of the huge machine. We were glad for the coats and sweaters, since they keep the inside of the building as close as possible to the outside ambient air temperature to minimize problems with the equipment when they open the dome for the night’s viewing. We went up several levels to view the telescope from high up, and considering the wind whistling around the building, passed on the offer to walk around the outside perimeter of the dome. We ate lunch in the dayroom before heading across the summit by car to take a quick look at the Keck multi-mirror telescope.

The trip back down was as slow and cautious as the trip up, the vehicle jouncing and whining along in the lowest gear range to save the brakes during the steep descent. It was almost completely dark as we entered the outer edges of Hilo.

After dropping of Mr. Tanaka with heartfelt thanks, we stopped for dinner at the Ice Pond Restaurant a block from the beach. Tables situated right next to wide open windows look out over the amazingly transparent waters of Ice Pond, so called not because any ice ever forms in Hilo, but because the spring-fed water in the lake is icy cold.

After dinner and a quick stop at Arnott’s Lodge to change to cooler clothes in our room we headed back down to the waterfront to investigate “Black and White Night”. Sponsored by all the businesses along the waterfront Kamehameha Avenue, it was a wildly popular super-block-party. Almost everyone from children in arms to teenagers and adults to tottering seniors was wearing some sort of clothing that reflected the theme of black and white. Jane wore a white T-shirt birthday present from the Subaru Telescope, and I wore a black T-shirt with the planets of the solar system on it while we strolled along the sidewalk with hundreds and hundreds of other people, looking in shop windows, listening to various bands that were set up about every two blocks, and generally gawking at all the other people milling about or dancing to the music. Probably the most interesting person we saw was wearing a black and white checked jacket, a black fedora hat, his face painted white, and a pair of black trousers with an inseam measurement of approximately 92 inches! Of course the man had five foot long stilts strapped to his lower legs, covered by the long trousers. The stilts went no higher than his knees, which gave him remarkable agility. He cold stride along the pavement with four foot paces, pause to dance for a bit, kicking back his stilt-legs one at a time so far that the ends almost touched the back of his head!

We stopped in a furniture store where they had set up a karaoke microphone, which wouldn’t seem all that unusual except for the fact that almost everyone sitting watching and everyone performing was Japanese.

After a couple of drinks and some more strolling, we headed back for our last night at Arnott’s Lodge.

Hawaii - Day ten

Thursday, November 6

This morning we had coffee, and fresh papaya and lime juice, purchased at the farmers’ market yesterday. We drove along the waterfront of Hilo, and headed out of town along the north east shore of the island, stopping frequently at spots where you could look out over the ocean.


Taking the narrow winding road off the main highway down to the beach at Laupahoehoe, I remembered reading long ago about the tragedy that struck there in 1946, when a tidal wave swept over the low lying land behind the beach, carrying away 19 students and two teachers to their deaths.

We stopped for lunch in the town of Honoka’a, and then drove up and over hills to Waimea, stopping briefly for a look at Hawaii Preparatory Academy where we had attended field trip classes in the summer of 1991. Turning to the north again, we drove over the Kohala Mountains and then down to Hawi, the northernmost town on the island of Hawaii.


Completing the loop back to Waimea, we took the Saddle Road across the vast grassy uplands of the Parker Ranch between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa back toward Hilo.







We wrapped up the day with dinner at the Ice Pond Restaurant, so called for the icy-cold, crystal clear spring water that fills this lake just inland from the Hilo beach.