This morning we were supposed to be going over to the west coast of the island to take a whale watching boat trip; but overnight we experienced a massive rainstorm with lightning, still in progress first thing this morning, so we abandoned that idea. Fortunately the trip organizers came to the same conclusion and cancelled the event, so we will get our money back.
I got up at 8:30am to the smell of bacon cooking - Dad making sandwiches - and the sound of small girl screaming. Little Starlet had discovered a large (big as a man's thumb) cockroach on the kitchen floor, on its back, still waving its legs. I subsequently discovered a second beastie next to the tumble drier, also waving. After much screaming and ewwwwwing, the two beasties were dispatched out the back door by brave Dad with the help of a very large glass.
It is still monsoon raining as I write. No plans for today, then.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
A Day at Home
Hubby and the girls headed off to the other side of the island for a snorkeling adventure, which I'll leave him to describe. I stayed at home, having no wish to be tossed around on a small boat or to make my own entertainment for five hours. Luckily the weather today has been glorious. First I walked into the center of Kailua, which took about 30 minutes, to find the bookstore, coffee shop, drug store, and Foodland. Having drunk my latte and chowed down my cake, I returned to the house laden with a new book for me, second hand books for the kids, bread for lunch, chocolate, hair conditioner - Little Starlet washed her hair three times yesterday - and an all important tube of anti-itch cream for bug bites.
After lunch on the lanai, I took my book and lawn chair down to the beach for a happy hour and a half of looking at the sea...until it started to rain again, not heavily, but enough to endanger the integrity of my paperback.
A couple of observations. First, everyone on Oahu seems to own at least one dog, usually a scrappy mutt of indeterminate parentage. Second, there is a serious lack of mailboxes. I've been carrying around a letter to mail since we arrived. And, third, though this house is not directly on the beach, I think it scores highly for being just a couple of minutes away from one of the nicest Hawai'ian beaches we've encountered, all golden sand and calm waves on a gently sloping sea bed. It even gets cleaned every morning.
Tomorrow, a day at the Polynesian Cultural Center. Fingers crossed that the weather has turned in our favor.
After lunch on the lanai, I took my book and lawn chair down to the beach for a happy hour and a half of looking at the sea...until it started to rain again, not heavily, but enough to endanger the integrity of my paperback.
A couple of observations. First, everyone on Oahu seems to own at least one dog, usually a scrappy mutt of indeterminate parentage. Second, there is a serious lack of mailboxes. I've been carrying around a letter to mail since we arrived. And, third, though this house is not directly on the beach, I think it scores highly for being just a couple of minutes away from one of the nicest Hawai'ian beaches we've encountered, all golden sand and calm waves on a gently sloping sea bed. It even gets cleaned every morning.
Tomorrow, a day at the Polynesian Cultural Center. Fingers crossed that the weather has turned in our favor.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Under the Sea Just You and Me...and 62 others
On Monday morning the rain let up a little, so we walked over to our local beach - which happens to be one of the top beach spots on Oahu, Kailua Beach - for a bit of paddling in the sea. We toughed it out for an hour till the weather overcame us. Dr Mom stood in the edge of the waves in her rolled up jeans and green anorak, looking properly British. The other three pranced in and out of the waves, getting steadily wetter and wetter. When the rain started to pour again we retreated to the house to clean up.
At 11:30am, we got in the car and headed over to Honolulu, for the day's adventure: lunch at Benihana's followed by an underwater trip on the Atlantis Submarine. It turned out that we should have left a lot more time to get there. Half an hour turned into an hour in the snarly Honolulu traffic. In fact, our overall impression of Honolulu was of a fairly average looking city with rather more palm trees than usual, terrible traffic, and a lot of hotels. We didn't feel inspired to visit again.
We arrived at Benihana's with only 45 minutes before check in time at the sub; so our leisurely lunch, with chef entertainment, didn't quite come off. In the end we gobbled down our food in about 15 minutes and raced out of the door into the pouring rain. I think our jolly chef didn't quite understand why we weren't more receptive to his jokes (which he clearly thought were pretty funny).
At the pier, we took the Atlantis boat out to the sub loading area, about 10 minutes, on a fairly choppy sea. We looked for whales but didn't see any. At the sub, you climb off the boat onto the deck of the sub, then down a vertical ladder comprising about ten rungs, into the seating area. We were on the sixty-four passenger sub, which has bigger windows. Every passenger gets their own window, pretty much. The Japanese family of five next to Dr Mom began to throw up into their little white bags as soon as they were on board. It was, admittedly, rather bouncy as we waited at the surface. Hubby says he was feeling quite green at this point. Then the sub dived, eventually reaching a depth of 110 feet. We spent 45 minutes working round several artificial reefs - two sunken ships, an airplane, some concrete pyramids, etc. I have to confess to being a little disappointed by what we saw. There was a school of eagle rays that was undeniably impressive, but other than that the fish seemed a bit thin on the ground...or should that be water.... The kids were impressed though.
The Japanese family continued to throw up noisily throughout the voyage, reaching a climax as the sub resurfaced to return us to the boat. At this point, Dr Mom was unable to resist the sensory pressures any more and also had a small, but perfectly contained, barf into a little bag. The trip back to shore was uneventful. We rewarded ourselves for a job well done by having giant ice creams before going back to the car.
Guess what - it was bucketing down with rain again.
At 11:30am, we got in the car and headed over to Honolulu, for the day's adventure: lunch at Benihana's followed by an underwater trip on the Atlantis Submarine. It turned out that we should have left a lot more time to get there. Half an hour turned into an hour in the snarly Honolulu traffic. In fact, our overall impression of Honolulu was of a fairly average looking city with rather more palm trees than usual, terrible traffic, and a lot of hotels. We didn't feel inspired to visit again.
We arrived at Benihana's with only 45 minutes before check in time at the sub; so our leisurely lunch, with chef entertainment, didn't quite come off. In the end we gobbled down our food in about 15 minutes and raced out of the door into the pouring rain. I think our jolly chef didn't quite understand why we weren't more receptive to his jokes (which he clearly thought were pretty funny).
At the pier, we took the Atlantis boat out to the sub loading area, about 10 minutes, on a fairly choppy sea. We looked for whales but didn't see any. At the sub, you climb off the boat onto the deck of the sub, then down a vertical ladder comprising about ten rungs, into the seating area. We were on the sixty-four passenger sub, which has bigger windows. Every passenger gets their own window, pretty much. The Japanese family of five next to Dr Mom began to throw up into their little white bags as soon as they were on board. It was, admittedly, rather bouncy as we waited at the surface. Hubby says he was feeling quite green at this point. Then the sub dived, eventually reaching a depth of 110 feet. We spent 45 minutes working round several artificial reefs - two sunken ships, an airplane, some concrete pyramids, etc. I have to confess to being a little disappointed by what we saw. There was a school of eagle rays that was undeniably impressive, but other than that the fish seemed a bit thin on the ground...or should that be water.... The kids were impressed though.
The Japanese family continued to throw up noisily throughout the voyage, reaching a climax as the sub resurfaced to return us to the boat. At this point, Dr Mom was unable to resist the sensory pressures any more and also had a small, but perfectly contained, barf into a little bag. The trip back to shore was uneventful. We rewarded ourselves for a job well done by having giant ice creams before going back to the car.
Guess what - it was bucketing down with rain again.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Tropical Storm Omeka
Our Saturday travel - which took as long as going from San Francisco to London in the end - rather knocked us out. We got lost a couple of times driving to the rental house as it was dark and the freeways around Honolulu make Spaghetti Junction look like a neat grid system. At one pointers found ourselves heading into the Pearl Harbor Naval Base. Taking evasive action, we ended up driving into the entrance of the Airforce base instead. The security lady was very nice and let us do a u-turn in the drive. I guess they must get that all the time....
Our house is fairly nice, though not as plush as some we've rented on other islands. To be fair, we only booked in September, and this is apparently the busiest week of the year in Hawai'i for tourists visiting, so I think we have to count ourselves lucky we got anything decent. Not thing we discovered early on was that the roof leaked in two places. And the way we discovered that? Tropical storm Omeka, of course.
Just as we got to Kailua, the town in which we are staying, the skies opened with the most dramatic downpour. We always say that when it rains in California, it really rains; but it has nothing on the rain we saw on Saturday night and Sunday. It seems that Tropical Storm Omeka is "an unusual December storm" (according to the University of Hawaii meteorological department); one that will not hit Hawai'i with any destructive force, but which brings a lot of rain to islands.
The rain beat down hard all Saturday night, waking us up several times. On Sunday, it is thought that ten inches of rain fell during 24 hours. The road at the end of our street (which is called Pilipu Drive, much to Little Starlet's endless amusement)' was awash with puddles several inches deep; and we learned later that flash flood warnings were in effect across the whole island.
Luckily, we were able to amuse ourselves with, first, a trip to the local Big City Diner for breakfast (Dr Mom had Eggs Benedict; Deep Thought has "pancake sandwich" comprising two large pancakes, two eggs, two sausages and two rashers of bacon; Little Startlet had a super sweet short stack of macadamia pancakes with special sauce; and Hubby had an omelet).
Then we went next door to the Foodland supermarket for our week's grocery, spending over $400 on a medium sized cart load of food! It is easy to forget how expensive Hawai'i is for food.... We rounded off the morning with a game of Life, which Deep Thought won spectacularly without taking the college route. A lesson in modern life, perhaps?
In the afternoon we headed up the coast to Kanahole to the movie theater to see the new Narnia movie, which was pretty good, and highly suitable for a very, very, wet day.
Our house is fairly nice, though not as plush as some we've rented on other islands. To be fair, we only booked in September, and this is apparently the busiest week of the year in Hawai'i for tourists visiting, so I think we have to count ourselves lucky we got anything decent. Not thing we discovered early on was that the roof leaked in two places. And the way we discovered that? Tropical storm Omeka, of course.
Just as we got to Kailua, the town in which we are staying, the skies opened with the most dramatic downpour. We always say that when it rains in California, it really rains; but it has nothing on the rain we saw on Saturday night and Sunday. It seems that Tropical Storm Omeka is "an unusual December storm" (according to the University of Hawaii meteorological department); one that will not hit Hawai'i with any destructive force, but which brings a lot of rain to islands.
The rain beat down hard all Saturday night, waking us up several times. On Sunday, it is thought that ten inches of rain fell during 24 hours. The road at the end of our street (which is called Pilipu Drive, much to Little Starlet's endless amusement)' was awash with puddles several inches deep; and we learned later that flash flood warnings were in effect across the whole island.
Luckily, we were able to amuse ourselves with, first, a trip to the local Big City Diner for breakfast (Dr Mom had Eggs Benedict; Deep Thought has "pancake sandwich" comprising two large pancakes, two eggs, two sausages and two rashers of bacon; Little Startlet had a super sweet short stack of macadamia pancakes with special sauce; and Hubby had an omelet).
Then we went next door to the Foodland supermarket for our week's grocery, spending over $400 on a medium sized cart load of food! It is easy to forget how expensive Hawai'i is for food.... We rounded off the morning with a game of Life, which Deep Thought won spectacularly without taking the college route. A lesson in modern life, perhaps?
In the afternoon we headed up the coast to Kanahole to the movie theater to see the new Narnia movie, which was pretty good, and highly suitable for a very, very, wet day.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Across - and in Some Cases, into - the Salt Flats at Badwater (Thursday Feb 18 cont'd)
After lunch, we walked over to the Visitor Center to wrestle again with the “free wi-fi”. This time we had some success, as the blog testifies (see below for multiple entries posted all at once). The bandwidth was insufficient to allow Hubby to post the hundreds of photos that he wanted, so that has to wait for a better service. Watch this space.
I also asked in the Visitor Center for some advice on walks we could do. Our options are a bit limited by the fact that our vehicle is a 25 foot long RV. It turns out that Death Valley is really a driving park. We now have a better appreciation of why so many people are towing cars behind their motor homes. There are very few trails and those which exist tend to be of the out-and-back type (rather than a loop), which are reached by driving down dirt tracks. Many of these tracks are labeled for four wheel drive, high clearance vehicles only. They are too rough for bicycles. We’ve noticed numerous motorbikes on the roads; and these do seem the ideal way to get about the park.
Our options have also been limited by the closure of several minor roads due to mud. This might seem strange in a desert, but there has been some rain over the past few weeks resulting in muddy conditions which will, I guess, dry to difficult ruts if cars are allowed on the roads. So the affected roads remain closed. Alas, this puts the kybosh on the walk I had planned for Friday morning, along Titus Canyon. The ranger in the Visitor Center agreed that we hadn’t many choices. We’ve decided that we’ll opt for the easy trails at the Salt Creek Interpretive Center and perhaps the Harmony Borax Works tomorrow. As for today, we decided to spend the cool part of the afternoon at the salt flats in Badwater.
Badwater is a natural spring that oozes out dense salty water. It is the home of a rare tiny snail that lives nowhere else on earth. (We didn't see it.) The information signs explain that the water accumulated underground in the last ice age and that the salt leaches out of the rocks around it. The spring area is protected by a short boardwalk. Visitors are then permitted to walk out onto the salt flats (which cover a five mile area). We walked out as far as we could, which was to the edge of the area that was fairly dry, about half a mile. Little Starlet decided to be naughty and bumptious, and walked out further, sinking into the glutinous salty mud up to her ankles. (That’s one pair of socks destroyed and a pair of sneakers caked in stinky poop-colored mud.)
The salt flats are, well, very flat and dominate the floor of Death Valley. In the sunshine they shimmer with the promise of water – which of course turns out to be completely undrinkable. It must have been a great disappointment to those poor 49ers and pioneers, for whom we are developing a strong sense of sympathy. The salt crystals form a crust on top of the sandy mud, creating little mountainous peaks that echo the mountains ringing the valley. It’s a thing of great beauty on a small scale. The kids took a lot of photos…. We were also able to watch the sun set over Telegraph Peak, which has an elevation of 11,048 feet (in contrast to Badwater’s elevation of 282 feet below sea level, which makes it the lowest point in the USA). Nice.
We finished the day back at Furnace Creek with a slightly strange pasta sauce concoction for dinner - the joys of camping - and a round of our new board game, Snorta. Deep Thought set the fire up for mom and dad’s evening entertainment.
We can’t get over how quiet this campground is. Each evening, our campfire has been one of a small handful. Last night it seemed to be the only one. Deep Thought reckons that this might be because there aren’t many kids around, so the adults are able to go into their motor homes whenever they want. She also thinks that the high percentage of seniors in the campground might be a contributing factor, older people wanting to keep warmer and all that. It is true that we are seeing a lot of elderly campers, and we’ve met some of them doing their email in the shadow of the Visitor Center. Many seem to have fled the cold weather in Oregon and Washington state. We’ve even met a couple from Calgary in Canada. It also seems pretty common for these older folks to be spending months on the road, hopping from campground to campground in the warmer south. Given the size of many of the RVs – Enormous! Huge! Giant! Ridiculous! – it’s easy to believe that life could be sustained in them quite adequately for five or six months. Maybe that’ll be me ‘n’ Hubby one day.
I also asked in the Visitor Center for some advice on walks we could do. Our options are a bit limited by the fact that our vehicle is a 25 foot long RV. It turns out that Death Valley is really a driving park. We now have a better appreciation of why so many people are towing cars behind their motor homes. There are very few trails and those which exist tend to be of the out-and-back type (rather than a loop), which are reached by driving down dirt tracks. Many of these tracks are labeled for four wheel drive, high clearance vehicles only. They are too rough for bicycles. We’ve noticed numerous motorbikes on the roads; and these do seem the ideal way to get about the park.
Our options have also been limited by the closure of several minor roads due to mud. This might seem strange in a desert, but there has been some rain over the past few weeks resulting in muddy conditions which will, I guess, dry to difficult ruts if cars are allowed on the roads. So the affected roads remain closed. Alas, this puts the kybosh on the walk I had planned for Friday morning, along Titus Canyon. The ranger in the Visitor Center agreed that we hadn’t many choices. We’ve decided that we’ll opt for the easy trails at the Salt Creek Interpretive Center and perhaps the Harmony Borax Works tomorrow. As for today, we decided to spend the cool part of the afternoon at the salt flats in Badwater.
Badwater is a natural spring that oozes out dense salty water. It is the home of a rare tiny snail that lives nowhere else on earth. (We didn't see it.) The information signs explain that the water accumulated underground in the last ice age and that the salt leaches out of the rocks around it. The spring area is protected by a short boardwalk. Visitors are then permitted to walk out onto the salt flats (which cover a five mile area). We walked out as far as we could, which was to the edge of the area that was fairly dry, about half a mile. Little Starlet decided to be naughty and bumptious, and walked out further, sinking into the glutinous salty mud up to her ankles. (That’s one pair of socks destroyed and a pair of sneakers caked in stinky poop-colored mud.)
The salt flats are, well, very flat and dominate the floor of Death Valley. In the sunshine they shimmer with the promise of water – which of course turns out to be completely undrinkable. It must have been a great disappointment to those poor 49ers and pioneers, for whom we are developing a strong sense of sympathy. The salt crystals form a crust on top of the sandy mud, creating little mountainous peaks that echo the mountains ringing the valley. It’s a thing of great beauty on a small scale. The kids took a lot of photos…. We were also able to watch the sun set over Telegraph Peak, which has an elevation of 11,048 feet (in contrast to Badwater’s elevation of 282 feet below sea level, which makes it the lowest point in the USA). Nice.
We finished the day back at Furnace Creek with a slightly strange pasta sauce concoction for dinner - the joys of camping - and a round of our new board game, Snorta. Deep Thought set the fire up for mom and dad’s evening entertainment.
We can’t get over how quiet this campground is. Each evening, our campfire has been one of a small handful. Last night it seemed to be the only one. Deep Thought reckons that this might be because there aren’t many kids around, so the adults are able to go into their motor homes whenever they want. She also thinks that the high percentage of seniors in the campground might be a contributing factor, older people wanting to keep warmer and all that. It is true that we are seeing a lot of elderly campers, and we’ve met some of them doing their email in the shadow of the Visitor Center. Many seem to have fled the cold weather in Oregon and Washington state. We’ve even met a couple from Calgary in Canada. It also seems pretty common for these older folks to be spending months on the road, hopping from campground to campground in the warmer south. Given the size of many of the RVs – Enormous! Huge! Giant! Ridiculous! – it’s easy to believe that life could be sustained in them quite adequately for five or six months. Maybe that’ll be me ‘n’ Hubby one day.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Bay to Breakers in less than four hours
We drove out of the Bay Area and got all the way to Gilroy before we had to stop for lunch. The Gilroy Outlets on Leavesley Road offer lots of options. We went for our favorite standby Fresh Choice. The kids are far too posh to go to McDonalds these days.Full of salad and pasta, we headed south on Highway 101. Oh dear, what a dull drive. In this direction, 101 follows the Salinas Valley, along the route of the Salinas River. It is framed by large hills on both sides, but the valley itself is a flat, pretty uninteresting plain. I must admit that I dozed off somewhere south of Salinas. Hubby struggled to stay awake, while the gruesome twosome asked the classic “Are we nearly there yet?” at half hourly intervals.
One point of interest was the San Ando(?) Oil Field, which had a romantic collection of nodding oil derricks visible on the horizon, and there was even one working just a few feet from the roadside. This was also near to the major vineyard in the area, the Calivega(?)vineyard, which was so large Hubby thought they must have cornered the market in two dollar chuck; but that might be grossly unfair.Other than that we couldn’t get tremendously excited: The road carefully bypasses all the little towns, so you get no sense of what it might be like to live there. In a few places there are shopping malls which look like the shopping malls anywhere in the Bay Area – same design, same architecture, same layout, same stores …. Very anonymous.
We arrived in Pismo Beach at 4:15pm - the whole journey took 3 hours and 45 minutes, give or take. It was a lovely sunny day, so the crowds were out in force. After one mistake, trying to book into the campground at North Beach, we were directed to our correct campground at Oceana. We have site 48, which has no hookups. I had paid for hookups, but the site where those are located is like an RV mobile home park, with all the vehicles just a few feet apart. We opted for the more spacious back loop without facilities. It was obvious the ranger thought we were mad as hatters.
Tempers were becoming a bit frayed in the tin can by this point so, after a quick pasta dinner, we walked down to the beach which is 0.1 miles out of the campground. Alas, it turns out that the campground backs onto the Oceana Recreational Vehicles Beach – in other words, cars and trucks are allowed to drive up and down it day and night. What a great shame. Why turn a lovely white beach into yet another road?We saw some bats and two deer on the way to the beach. We also discovered a trail that heads over the sand dunes, so we plan to walk that in the morning, and then see if the ranger can suggest a non-vehicle beach nearby where we can take the RV for the afternoon. (We’re here for two nights so we get a full day at the coast.)
And now to drink tea, each salt and vinegar chips, and generally relax. Crackling fire, waves on the beach, hooting freight trains in the distance….
Friday, February 12, 2010
Preparing for the off
Hubby is currently in San Leandro picking up the RV. I have just done the first run to the supermarket to pick up drinking water - 15 gallons so far - and part of our food stock, mainly breakfast.
We are in a crazy position just now, as our house remodel has reached the peak of disruption. Trying to pack while moving things from room to room to accommodate the building works is a bit maddening. And today is the day that the toilet in the kids' bathroom had decided to go into meltdown. Luckily the site supervisor for our remodel project says he'll deal with it....
Back to pacing and making lists.
Oh, and it's just started to rain.
We are in a crazy position just now, as our house remodel has reached the peak of disruption. Trying to pack while moving things from room to room to accommodate the building works is a bit maddening. And today is the day that the toilet in the kids' bathroom had decided to go into meltdown. Luckily the site supervisor for our remodel project says he'll deal with it....
Back to pacing and making lists.
Oh, and it's just started to rain.
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