Chronicles From the Road: May as Well Get this One out of the Way, Hawaii

This blog deserves a preface.  The road was hard.  It was hard on us physically (eating out all of the time, in a car at least two days a week for 12 hours or more each time, late nights, etc).   It was hard on our marriage. (It sounds nice to be together 24 hours a day / 7 days a week, but seriously, it's not nice to be with anyone that often.  The only place we had to go during a fight was the bathroom or the lobby.)  It was hard on us spiritually.  (Not knocking evangelists, but the same 12 messages, coupled with theology classes, don't exactly feed you spiritually over a 15 month time span, not to mention the lack of fellowship with believers who knew us and we knew them.)  So, it was difficult.

I'm not, however, going to lie and say that there was not perks.  There were... and that is what this blog is about, Most Remembered Perk!

Hawaii!

This was a dream come true for me on so many levels.  One of my bucket list items is to see all 50 states and 5 of 7 continents before I die.  (I'm debating putting all 7 on there, afterall, it's a bucket list and they DO offer a cruise to Antarctica now.)  I've been to Alaska previously, so visiting Hawaii knocked the other big one off the state list. 

Not to mention I love, love, LOVE the ocean.  It's beautiful, and it's big, and it reminds me how small I am, and it's mysterious, and it smells good, and it reminds me of warm weather, and oh, I just love the beach.  I experience God when I experience the beach, and Hawaii, wow, they are islands, which means a LOT of ocean.  Awww, did I mention I love the ocean?  I do.

So, we got to go to Hawaii.  We got to eat the food, immerse in the culture, hang out with the people, experience a desert and a rainforest on the same island, drive around cliffs where water was beating against the rocks we were driving on, awww, it was wonderful. 

We were on the island of Molokai, deemed the most Hawaiian island, it has not been "commercialized" much... which was nice.  We ate at one little Pizza place often, a little restaurant on the ocean a few times (beautiful), and at Subway (the only chain restaurant they have on this island), once.  We also watched while the pastor ate an interesting little contraption, spam and rice wrapped in seaweed, which he bought from a gas station like we would a burger or something.  Weird.  We didn't try that.

It was beautiful.   The flowers were gorgeous, the ocean was more than I could have ever dreamed, we visited a white sand beach and a black sand (volcanic) beach on the same day.  Not to mention, church was amazing.  Nice little building with four sets of french doors opened up to let the breeze in.  No need for air conditioning anywhere. 

We slept right on the ocean, and I swear we got attacked by bullfrogs every night.  But it was wonderful.

And did you know that Hawaii has no snakes?  Crazy, right?  And when you go in and out of the state at the airport, they go crazy checking stuff.

I can't say enough about it, it was beautiful and wonderful and by far the biggest perk of the road.
Here are some pics to get my point across ;) 

Us just getting to Molokai.  This tree was at the retreat center we were staying at, it was huge!  And the fresh flower leis were great and wonderful of course!

The prettiest beach and water that I ever did see!  Has nasty rip currents, but it didn't keep us from going back more than once!  It's forever long and surprisingly unpopulated!  (The sand here is hot though, unlike the sand at Orange Beach, AL.)

One of many pretty flower pictures I took.  They were everywhere, you really couldn't get them all!

Us at our favorite little Molokai restaurant.  If you look real hard you can see where the waves are breaking way in the background, that is the reef.  This was basically how our little hotel room / apartment thingy set, this was our view everyday. 
I had french toast at this particular restaurant our first meal that came out purplish / black.  It had been soaked in an egg / guava juice mixture.  It was amazingly good!

And this is the black sand beach, though it doesn't look so black in this picture.  This was down on the peninsula that was a leper colony.  I had just hiked down something like 3 miles, which was 4000 feet straight down sea cliffs.  It was an awesome hike, and a really great tour once we got down there.  So much amazing history.  The inhabitants of the peninsula are those that were forced to live there years ago, all of whom carry the disease.  (Controlled now by medication.) 

A statue of Jesus in the church that used to be Father Damien's church.  He was a priest that came to live amongst the people when their disease was not controllable or curable.  He completely changed the way they lived, but eventually contracted the disease and died himself.  It really is a remarkable story.  I really advise you to check out these two websites about it!  It was one of the most remarkable parts of our trip! 
CBS Story Done in 2003
Molokai's Website About Kalaupapa