Hawaii

I tagged along with Mom and Dad on a late-September trip to Hawaii. Sadly, Christina had to stay behind for work. We  missed having her with us.

We stayed at Bellows Air Force Station, a lovely little spot which we've visited several times over the years. I won't add too much commentary to these pictures, since I've written about the same place here and here. We didn't do a lot of site-seeing. Instead, it was a trip for resting, relaxing and a whole lot of boogie-boarding. :-)

This the old runway on the airbase. It's no longer in use and is actually part of a "nature trail."

Mom posed for me next to a banyan tree on the nature trail.

This part of the nature trail looked the part. :-)

We took one morning to go snorkeling at Hanama Beach. 

I just snapped this shot, because it looked so funny to me. Hanama Bay is overrun with feral cats. The eight in this picture are just a few of them!

Our little Bellows cabin.

That's Rabbit Island in the background.

This is the view that I always remember when I think of Bellows. Endless sky and endless blue water!

One morning while we waited for the sun rise, I had fun trying to catch shots of these cute little sand crabs. Can you see him?

The first little bit of sunrise color.

There it is!

We spent our last night in Waikiki. I had fun taking some pictures at the beach as the sun was setting. (Bellows is on the east side of Oahu, so we only get sunrises over there.)

The Honolulu skyline from my lanai (balcony).

And that, friends, is finally the last of the summer blog posts! Thanks for sticking with me through all of them!

Mt. Rainier Day 3

Day three was by far the clearest day we had at Mt. Rainier. We took Dad and Christina up to Sunrise to see the views. Day three was also a Saturday.We soon realized that would mean LOTS of people. We more than once gave up on stopping at sites, because it was just too hard to fine parking spots. However, we did drive through a lot of the park that day, including Paradise, and saw a lot of amazing views.

We stopped by Grove of the Patriarchs, a small area of the park that boasts some very big trees. Some have already fallen, but some are still standing and alive.

The actual grove has to be accessed by a suspension bridge that proved to be a bit of an obstacle since there were so many people trying to cross over!

Christina, Mom and Amber standing under some very big trees!

We got different views of Mt. Rainier as we rounded the southern side of the park. It was just as stunning from each new angle! Here is one shot from a viewpoint near Paradise. I didn't take many pictures as we drove through the park, because I was driving. :-)

And there you have the last of our adventures at Mt. Rainier. It was not quite the last trip of the season for me, though. Stay tuned for Hawaii!

Mt. Rainier Day 2

I skipped ahead to post pictures of Labor Day, but I want to go back and post the rest of my pictures from Mt. Rainier! So here is day two. It was a Friday, and Dad and Christina weren't able to join us until the evening. So Mom, Amber and I took a hike up by the Sunrise visitor center. We hiked up to an area called the Burroughs. It was bit harder than I expected and it was pretty hot that day, but it was still a great hike! Sadly, it was also pretty hazy. We still got some amazing mountain views, though.

Shadow Lake

Wildflowers

We hiked along the edge of this valley. If you look down toward the bottom of the valley, you can see the beginning of the White River, which ran by our campground. Also, check out that beautiful turquoise-colored lake! I never could find a name for it.

All these people were hiking down as we hiked up. We realized that we had chosen to go the "wrong" (harder) direction on a loop trail between the visitor center and the Burroughs.

Do you see those little white specks? Those are goats!

The green, forested section down in the valley is called Berkeley Park. We didn't get to hike down in there, but I would like to come back sometime and do that.

That bare hill is First Burrough and the long steep trail up to its crest was our last hard push before we headed back down.

We made it! Check out that view of Mt. Rainier!

Frozen Lake. We hiked past it on our way back down. The path back to the visitor center was much easier and much faster!

Dad and Christina met up with us at the campground. We were sorry that they missed hiking with us. We took them down to the White River around sunset, though, where we admired Mt. Rainier again.