Hasty Departure

Au revoir Hawaii Big Island. It was time to pause our stay in Hawaii: tomorrow, a stay-at-home order goes into effect for the whole of Hawaii. We’ll return in December (ultimately it was December 2021) to complete the journey when the island will be back in business and trails have been reopened.

All-You-Can-Eat Eyeballs

Picked some longan (also known as “dragon eye” or “eyeball”). We’re renting a cabin on a fruit farm where we can pick all the fruit we want. Longan is a smaller version of lychee.

Hiking Abandoned Roads

Hiked another barricaded, abandoned road in another lovely valley. With the closure of Volcanoes National Park, and state and county parks, we’re improvising with abandoned roads, back-country roads and former sugar cane haulage roads.

Abandoned Sugar Mill

Revisited the abandoned valley we hiked through a couple days ago. This time we were able to ford a stream because the water level had dropped. We continued along the decaying road until we reached the ruins of a sugar refinery, slowly disappearing into the jungle.

Balancing Coronavirus Risks

Every morning we read the New York Times, the Washington Post, and our local paper, the Star Tribune. We took out subscriptions to all three newspapers within days of the 2016 presidential election because we need to support good journalism to hold the US Administration accountable. Today, the news is uniquely disturbing. Most of us… Continue reading Balancing Coronavirus Risks

An Abandoned Valley

View from an abandoned road in an abandoned valley. We clambered around a barrier then walked along the decaying road, down into the valley, past towering, lush vegetation, across a mossy bridge, and onwards towards the Pacific.