Gramps, forecast here is for into the 20s today and into the 30s [above freezing!] tomorrow and thru the weekend ~ I'm convinced that must be in honor of your return home ~ even the weather gremlins miss you!

That party sounds mega cool ~ I love meeting folks who "stretch the mold" ~

Safe travels home ~

Sooz

Wow gramps, that sounds like quite an interesting collection of people! I'd love something like that. The conversation must have been wonderful.

Enjoy your last hours and safe journey home.

Wish I had stowed away in your luggage.

Anyone talking CMOS??????

gramps, I saw this in our local online newspaper today an thought about what you said about the landscape where you were.




What will it be like for Mars One astronauts? In this June 4 2013 photo provided by the University of Hawaii, research space scientist Oleg Abramov walks outside simulated Martian base at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Six researchers have spent the past four months living in a small dome on a barren Hawaii lava field at 8,000 feet, trying to figure out what foods astronauts might eat on Mars and during deep-space missions.

Ok gramps, I figure you're home safe and sound now with a couple good night's sleep in your own bed. Please let us know.........and any new stories about your Hawaiian adventure.

Roseanne, we're back home after a brutal 24 hours of airline confusion and extended physical confinement at high altitude. As soon as I can get my eyes to stay uncrossed long enough, I'll have one more little closing post about the experience of this trip.

Sorry gramps. Take all the time you need to recover. I look forward to your post.

It's been an intense week back in Wisconsin, home from Hawaii and plunged into the deep pool of accumulated undone work. So I'm late finishing this travelogue, in case anyone still cares about it. The coming home was the trip from hell, not that Hawaii is hell. It took 24 hours from arriving at the airport in Hilo to busting through the snowdrifts in our driveway. Cancelled flights, delayed flights, wrong seats, etc. We're still tired.

Two things to say about that - The United Airlines personnel did their best for us and deserve a card of thanks, and our 5-yr old granddaughter bore up like a veteran through it all.

Several bad things had not happened back home. I had not forgotten to turn off the outside faucets, so the pipes didn't freeze and our basement was not full of water. Our 40-year old Sears freezer did not die of old age, so no metal box full of rotted meat and veggies. The house did not burn down, and nobody broke in or stole our vehicles. All good. Very good to sit once again in my upholstered chair, sleep in our own bed, go to work and do the familiar tasks on Monday.

I wished I could have taken a globe aboard the airplane. It would have been a great opportunity to teach some geography to little Sylvia.

Hawaii is beautiful in varied ways. Beautifully lush, beautifully green, beautifully alive where we were in the southeast, with food falling out of the trees around us, animal life abounding in the woods and in the air. Up in volcano country, where the mountain more recently vomited out lava, it's beautifully ugly. Hard to believe the miles and miles of earth cinders, black, ragged, jagged, tumbled and piled, virtually lifeless in comparison to anywhere else. On the other side of the mountain, in the west, it is desert now, having suffered five years of drought so far. All brown, desiccated grasses and scrub shrubs. Not so beautiful.

And the ocean is monotonously beautiful, wave after wave after wave etc. ad infinitum, foam on the beach forever and ever, and you stare and listen as if something different were going to happen any moment now, until it's time to go home.

Two weeks is not long enough to know anything about the culture. And Pahoa is a poor area, compared to the touristy west, or even farther up the east coast in Hilo, which is a bustling metroplis by comparison...Walmarts, Targets, Auto body shops, fashion boutiques, restaurants, accounting firms, and a little industry. Pahoa is wild pigs and feral jungle chickens and propane tank filling businesses by the side of the road. Fences and locked rusted gates everywhere outside the town limits. In the moist air everything rusts, even houses. Old 4-wheel drives, raised up for lava-hopping, and running the mud roads.

Also artists, and chefs and retired people from somewhere else who seriously want to be let alone. Marijuana patches, marijuana as currency. Son told me about 90% of people are on food assistance and state-supplied health care, which they accept as recompense for the hijacking of their native culture so many years ago.

People are scratching for a living, doing what they have to. It actually feels a bit lawless and dangerous. This is the feeling I have, despite meeting some accomplished, sociable, kind folks. And some who say, "I have got to get off this f'ing rock."

Anyway,it was a great trip. Interesting, heart-warming to see our young son (turning 40 soon) and his young bride (going attractively grey just a little bit) living and loving in that environment. They're good kids with sweet kids of their own, doing things right.

Glad we went, glad to be home. Thanks for this opportunity to write about it.

Thanks for taking the time to end your travelog. Glad you made it back home and there were no nasty surprises waiting. I'm happy you made the trip and I'm sure your son and his family are too.

Thanks, Roseanne.

Thanks, Chaos.

grampa, I'm glad you're back home safely and all is well. I'm very glad y'all went and had such a good visit. Sounds wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for reading it, jeanne. Helped me know how to think about it.

I enjoyed every post, gramps. I have a friend living in Kauai. She immerses herself in the local politics but still isn't fully acculturated. This is the second time she has lived there for a stretch but I don't think she will stay too many more years. My mom lived in Hawaii right before she married my dad (second marriage) She was very lonely there and never wanted to return.

Thanks, Queenie. There's something about Hawaii and Alaska. They're different enough that not everyone can live there.