Japanese bento

Rochelle took us to get a bento for our trip up the mountain. This place is so popular that it often sells out of many items by 10:30 am on a Saturday. Here, although I am trying to hard to not blink and have eyes as big as Jeff's, I don't mind this goofy shot. The food was so yummy. You can pick items a la carte to create your own bento or go with one of their combos. I love the long rice. It's been around decades and only locals know about it, so we were thrilled to get in on the secret.

Akaka Falls

From L to R, Jesse (Jeff's college friend), Sue-King (a friend of Rochelle's also visiting that weekend from the "mainland"), Jeff, myself and Rochelle. This is one of the rare pics of all of us together. Jesse & Rochelle were so gracious in taking us all around - we hiked the falls, stopped at Ed's Bakery for homemade jam (lilikoi jam, my favorite), then went up to Haleakala that night, gaining thousands of feet in elevation in the same day.

Spam musubi, anyone?

Spam is the ever ubiquitous mystery meat still favored by locals. Oh, we love it so too. Here I am, too cheap to buy the pillow, but loved it enough to take a picture with it. There was one day that we ate Spam at three meals - fried up with eggs and taro bread french toast for breakfast, spam musubi for lunch and spam fried rice for dinner. Yum! Spam is a recurrent theme of our trip.

Hilo

We were greeted in Hilo by Jesse and Rochelle with leis, who were so gracious and kind to us during our stay. Rochelle grew up in Hilo and was able to teach us about local history. This sign really cracked me up - it was posted at the downtown bus depot. Some things you can never plan for, such as lava flowing, which came to the surface a week before we headed to Hawaii.

Hana

Here we are, finally at Hana. This is one of the best self shots we've ever taken. The road back was long and windy and my motion sickness did not help. We stopped at a farmstand along the way to buy coconut candy and apple bananas.

Jeff loves his Stang

This is taken on the road to Hana, a scenic mountainous road along the coast of Maui. We thought we looked so cool cruising around in this car, which is perfect for Hawaiian, but not Seattle's climate.

Hawaii Honeymoon Recap...

More pics to follow, but before I freeze to death at home in Seattle - we wanted to cherish and savor the highlights of our long awaited honeymoon. This picture is taken in Maui, en route to our hotel from the airport. Since we've been back over a week already, this will be a flashback.

After running around like headless chickens, it turns out our flight to Maui was delayed 3 hours. This delay was made up by the rental car company upgrading us to a red late model 'Stang (Jeff has an older model), so he was delighted. Maui was a blur - very scenic, though everything is far as we had not researched logistics before going. We drove the road to Hana and ate mediocre tourist priced food. We also saw some whales in the distance along the coast.