Hawaii Vaca, Post 12 - Big Island Helicopter Tour, Pt 2

So kids, we find ourselves in part II of our most excellent helicopter adventure.  This is the post where some of the folks aboard the lovely aircraft started to feel, uh...  not so lovely.  That's a few pics away though yet, and we have some other terrain to look at that is, in my humble opinion, quite fantastic!

I love this shot as it's quite indicative of the dichotomy of the terrain you see while flying/slash driving around the Big Island.

More "puzzle piece" edges of the same!

A lot of the nearest dark spots in this pic are due to the spacious clouds above our 'copter.  I took the picture though because I was fascinated again on where we humans will choose to build a road on which to live.

This shot and the next are nearly the same, with the next one taken on a minute or so after the first.

The top of the volcano (Mauna Kea, I believe) in the background with lots of "seas of broccoli" in the foreground.  I found myself spacing off at one point looking out the window, and said to my same self, "I didn't know that they grew so much broccoli here in Hawaii!",  before realizing that I'm a dork and I'm looking at the tops of trees.   Yes, I just revealed that about myself...

That is some type of animal down there...   I not see nor smell them so lets just assume that they're cows.

Here, we're looking at the town of Paauilo.

This is Pu'u'ala farms, which still doesn't explain this, but it looks like natural fencing.

Ooooh boy!  Here's where the vomiting starts!  We got to the area that, I believe is called, "7 Gorges".  I think it's because there are more than 6 gorges and less than 8, but it was nearly impossible to count at the time.  No matter, it was absolutely beautiful!!!

The pilot did a few twists and turns around the opening to this lovely valley.   And after that, we flew into the valley!

A nice look back from where we came from as we're entering the valley.

A REALLY, REALLY tight little canyon.  Even tho there are no snakes in Hawaii, I still would NOT want to be caught in this canyon!

These were cool.  I'm not sure what they were called but the double waterfalls where the water has created a pooling up about halfway down the ridge, then overflows that into another waterfall.  Stunning!

Our pilot flew us right in to the edge of his favorite double waterfall, so close that we inexperienced peeps were afraid that the rotors atop the helicopter were going to hit the foliage on the side of the mountain, get tangled up and send us down the side of the mountain in a flaming heap.  That didn't happen.

This was one of the pilots favorite areas on the island.  So what did he do?  He flew up to the edge of the ridge, so close that I thought our rotor would hit the vegetation.  Then he "floated" backwards, down and sideways a bit to turn around to begin our trip back out of the valley.  That little turnaround move proved too much for the female newlywed on our trip.  This is where she reached for the first vomit bag...

Pic of a stream on our way back out...  if that wasn't fairly obvious.

This was in the second valley we entered.

Amazing!

Beautiful!

We're beginning to leave the gorges at this point.

I could spend ALL DAY here!

Or here!

This is the point that I snapped the picture when the male newlywed radioed the pilot to tell of the distress that the female newlywed was in...  it started to smell bad here too.

The last of the valleys before we ascended over one of these ridges and entered what appeared to be flat grasslands for ranching.  Who knew?!?

That does it for part II of the helio tour.

2017 Pumpkin Patch

This year, much like last year, has seen some SERIOUS changes in our lives that have required a LOT of extra time and emotion to deal with stuff.  Last year, my sister in law, Molly, died unexpectedly and threw our lives into a spiral.  She was very involved in all things that we did as a family from vacations to the kids games in various sports from football, soccer, basketball and so on. 

This year, my wife's momma died and had a less profound spiral, but craziness to deal with none-the-less.

So what happens when these types of things happen?

Your good friends truly show themselves as good friends and that's what we have here!  And that's what we have here in this post.

I've mentioned in the past that we pick up a couple of extra strapping young lads from school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, who may or may not go by the names Max and Jack.

Their momma announced last Friday when the kids had no school, that she was taking the boys up to a pumpkin patch for fun and/or games and would be willing to pick up extras if they wanted to tag along.

Our boys were all in!

Caleb and Max racing the pedaled four wheelers.

Caleb and Robby looking gorgeous (in my opinion).

Caleb, Robby, Max & Jack on the bounce pillow.  Why didn't they have these when I was young???

Robby buried in corn.

Momma Jill (a.k.a. FANTASTIC FRIEND!!!), Max, Caleb, Robby and Jack on a tractor ride out thru the pumpkin fields.

Revisiting Some Important Historical Stuffs!

A few weeks back, we needed to be back in my hometown of Waterloo, IA. for a visitation.  Turns out that the funeral home was under two miles from an important historical marker for our family; the place where I proposed to my lovely bride on April 30th, 1991.

On that date, the water in Black Hawk creek behind us was pretty close to the rock due as we had had some significant rainfall.  The floodgates were only open to a width of about two feet and we probably shouldn't have been in there, but we were.

You can't tell from the photo, but my leg, which had been feeling pretty good all day long, was starting to hurt as our photographer (Robby and Caleb) were taking a LONG time trying to get different settings on the phone camera! I'm not as young and spry as I was back in 1991.

More Fashion!

The (not so) little man out shopping with mom at Cabela's and the new outlet mall in Altoona.  He no longer had any pants that fit, or were even close...  And yes, he changed in the car.

Jesus Take The Wheel

So we found ourselves back in Crystal Lake, Iowa tonight.  We went up to see grandpa after his extraordinarily bad last 100 days.   He's doing well, all things considered, and we had some business to attend too.

Since we need to clean things out and sort thru them at the same time, we decided to drive two vehicles and accomplish as much as we can after Mr. Calebs test out of the orange belt in Tae Kwon Do this morning.  

Anyway, once the work was completed, Dad and Caleb had a bit of time to sneak in a golf cart ride.  Caleb wanted to drive and I was tired, so...   so be it.

This is on the road heading West out of Crystal Lake towards the cemetary.  It's both of the boy's favorite road as there is hardly any traffic on it and it's probably 2/3 of a mile out of town.  So by the time they get out there, turned around in the most dramatic of fashions, they are content that they are not only ready to drive a car, but also a tank, pilot an airplane and man a space ship...  so, it's good.

The boy, in the heat of the 11mph moment, givin' it all she's got!

Renaissance Faire

We have awesome friends.  I have stated that before in this space and I will likely state it many more times before I hang up the blogging shoes.

These friends were headed to the Renaissance Faire at Sleepy Hollow in East Des Moines and invited Caleb to tag along with them.  There were far more pictures than these, but these were the four that featured our Calebber!
 

I have little to say about the pictures, because I wasn't present when they were being taken so I really have no clue what's going on other than in the 'corn-dog' photo. 

Non-serious Bullheadedness...

If there's anything good that comes out of a funeral, it's that it brings families together in areas that may not be the most typically tread by those peeps.

And that sort of brings us to these couple of pics.

I wrote about my Mother-in-law, Marlene Bushman, passing away.  These pictures were taken on Monday, September 18th, the day of the funeral.  

Crystal Lake, Iowa, home of the worlds largest bullhead and a nice photo op or two.

My sister, Doris Brunnette with Robby and Caleb.

My other sister, Dianne Griffith with Robby and Caleb.