We just came back from my first visit to Hawaii. We went to visit with my father-in-law who moved there with his wife last year. They don't plan to come back here, so if we're going to see them we need to get to Hawaii--not a bad place to "have" to go, but it's not that easy to make the trip when you have animals to take care of.  Here are some photos of our visit. This is the little 10 (or 12?) seat plane that took us from Maui to the Big Island. We were skeptical, especially when we saw one of the pilots for another commuter plane who looked like he was about 12, but it actually gave us great views of the islands and the coastline.

Isn't that water beautiful?

We were met by our relatives, leis in hand.

The first evening in Hawaii we got to the beach just as the sun was setting.

This photo was taken at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. This is an incredible place to visit but you need a couple of days to be able to hike the trails and see it all. We drove down to where the road was blocked by a lava flow 10+ years ago. This is right on the coast and it would sure be something to watch the lava flow into the ocean.

That's all lava as far as you can see.

There are beautiful textures...

...all around...

...and color when you look more closely.

The landscape is immense.

We especially liked the message on this cap. Can you read it? (See next photo)

We did some touristy things:

One day was spent in Kona shopping and eating. One thing it's hard to get used to is that many of the buildings don't have walls. As long as you can get under a roof you will be out of the rain, but it's never cold enough to need the walls. I wonder what the CA Health Department would do if they saw birds walking around on the tables in a restaurant.

We spent one morning zip-lining through the trees. That is Dan and, yes, I did it too. I'll have to get photos from Dan's camera. The scariest part was the drive to and from the zip-line course.

It took 6-wheel-drive to get up there and we were still slipping and sliding on the road.

Food is an important part of any vacation and we tried a few of my in-laws favorite places. This is a meatloaf sandwich on homemade sourdough bread.

There wasn't much beach time but we were there for a couple of hours before it started to rain.

Next time I'd definitely like to explore more beaches.

We feasted at a lu'au...

...and as the sun went down...

...we were entertained by the show. Since our goal was mainly to visit with family we spent a lot of time at the house--which is not on the beach or in the rainforest, but at Waikoloa, in the dry area of the Big Island.

I loved the bananas--a different taste from the ones at Safeway.

I was amused by the geckos...

...although it still seems strange to see them roaming around inside the house.

We were gone for 8 days and needed a day to recover when we got home. It's fun to visit but good to be back home to sheep and yarn and chores...and, of course, Rusty. I was going to write a blog post about what it took for us to be gone this long, but I think I'll ask Rusty to write that one. He has been waiting to use the computer because I had it with me. Check out Rusty's blog a little later.