Popinjay: PERFECT

My bloggy friend Michelle issued a photography / blogging challenge last week... the fact that I didn't see it until today is irrelevant, right?

Her challenge? Post a picture that shows the word PERFECT. (Click on the pic for a bigger version.)

This photo, taken from the top of Mount Haleakala in Hawaii, is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken. The feeling of being above the clouds, and the play of the light on the clouds, was just surreal. I got several amazing photos, but this was my favorite. I don't know if angels hang out on clouds with harps, but I could almost picture it up there! Plus, the trip -- and this side trip -- was made with friends whose company I enjoy, plus my sweet husband, and it's hard to get more perfect than that.

Go to Michelle's entry on PERFECT and you can read what everyone else has to say!

Sunday Strollin' in Chicago

This is my third visit to the Windy City, but it's really my first chance to explore the place. I'm enjoying it a lot.

We got here on Saturday, collapsed in our hotel for a two-hour nap, and took a train ride to Wheaton to visit friends that evening. I failed to take any pictures, but I'm kicking myself now. Their girls are adorable, and we had a great time hanging out with them. It was also my first time on a "real" train, as opposed to a subway. It took two subways and a commuter train to get us there.

On Sunday, we took the advice of my friend Heather, a Chicago native, and went for some real Chicago stuffed pizza.

This location was only one stop away on the El. Unfortunately, our El stop isn't exactly conveniently located. You get used to the cold and the long walk though. I bet I wouldn't have a gym membership if I lived here. Not a lot of really overweight people here, I'm finding. Even though they eat this.

This is quite possibly the best garlic cheese toast I've ever put in my mouth. Flaky bread, melted cheese, perfect marinara... my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

And that was just the prelude to this.

Yeah. They have to cut around the edge of your plate to separate the cheese from the rest of the pizza. This is my kind of meal.

This was when I started to understand what my Chicago friends mean when they tell me the Austin-located "Chicago style pizza" places aren't the real thing, that they're pale imitations. I din't want to believe them, but I have to say they're right. The flaky crust, the sauce... Giordano's is the place. Yum.

After we rolled ourselves out of the restaurant, we headed to the Belmont subway station to find this funky little tile mural. I had to capture it since it was so fun.

We headed to the State Street shopping district. Macy's here, like in NYC, takes up an entire city block. Also like in NYC, they take their window decorations seriously. I won't bore you with all of them, but there were several places where the scene was reminiscent of "A Christmas Story" with the kids pressed against the glass.

There was also a group of several guys playing percussion on five-gallon drums that were very talented. My new camera takes video and I captured it, but I am having technical difficulties getting it onto youtube. I'll leave that on the to-do list and hope I can manage it soon.

We headed inside Macy's -- the biggest department store I've ever seen. If you're an escalator fan, this is the place for you! I really just liked the lines of this shot.

Once we got near the top, we looked out a window and saw this. The architecture was really beautiful throughout the store.

On the 7th and 8th floors was the Great Tree. You can tell how tiny the people are in this shot; the tree is just enormous.

Once outside, the city was dressed in its Christmas best, breathtaking in the twilight.

This was taken near where we ate dinner. I don't know the name of the building, but I loved looking up through the Christmas-lit branches.

We passed a plaza where there were dozens of trees lit up in front of a Christmas tree.

This is the same plaza, shot from the side.

We walked down Michigan Avenue across the Chicago River, to get to a reputed John Cusack hangout. Sadly, there was no Cusack joy to be found. On the bright side, we met a fascinating lawyer from Houston, a fellow who played football for Texas in the Earl Campbell days. I think I may have had a better time talking to him than I would have to Johnny himself!

Nahhhhh.

Anyway, on the way to the hangout we passed the Wrigley building, which is beautiful at night.

These are their Christmas trees, above the main entrance.

And back at our hotel that night, these are the decorations there. Home sweet home-away-from-home!

I've loved exploring a new place this December. What is your favorite Christmas tradition? What is your favorite new thing this year?

What I Did on My Summer Vacation (All of Them)

This post is shamelessly stolen from Vince's blog since I don't have an original bone in my body and I'm not ashamed to admit it. And I like maps and find it interesting to see where other people have been.

So here's where I've been:

visited 16 states (32%)

I've driven from Texas to California by both the northern and southern routes, thus filling in all those states, and I've driven to Illinois and Florida as well. I've flown to Hawaii and New York for fabulous vacations.

Unfortunately, the rest of the US remains untouched. I hope to make it to Alaska on a cruise next year with my fun aunt who's celebrating a significant birthday. I guess the rest of the country will have to wait.

What am I missing that I must see? Where have you been? Create your own map, post it and tell me -- or just post a comment telling me how many states you've been to.

A Fish Tale

If you hate fish, just look away.  Today's post is not for you.

On Friday, I went on a seven hour snorkeling cruise.  There were two one-hour snorkel stops, and we were supposed to see dolphins along the way.  Apparently our day was quite unusual in terms of weather, so that threw a lot of things off, including dolphin sightings, much to my dismay.

Generally the first stop is Molokini Crater, followed by an area close to the island of Lana'i, which is quite close to Maui.  However, that morning our captain had found out that the weather at Molokini was really bad -- very choppy water with one-foot swells, hardly ideal for snorkeling.  He also heard it was supposed to clear off by early afternoon though, and he told us that the timing of our return might be such that we would have the place to ourselves -- almost unheard of in such a popular snorkel spot.

Before I get started on too many details, I should introduce you to my tour, the crew, and the boat.  I went with the fine folks of Pacific Whale Foundation, a non-profit organization concerned with ocean ecology and the plant and animal life thereof.  They were great folks, and I highly recommend their tour.

This was our boat, the OceanVoyager:

It holds something like 149 people, but we only had 77 or so on my cruise -- very comfortable.

Here are three of our six crew members.

From L-R, they are Gabe, one of the two naturalists (sort of like a marine biologist) on board; Juliana, the first mate; and Jenn, all around helpful and cool chick.  I'm missing Jeremy, the captain; the other naturalist, and the food server / bartender (I don't remember the names of the latter two).

When we got to Lana'i (pronounced Lah-neye'-ee), we pulled up to this rock, just offshore. There was a legend about it -- I believe it's called Sweetheart Rock, and they said it's the most highly photographed rocks around Maui and Lana'i -- but I don't remember the story accurately. Something about a lover throwing himself off the top. It didn't sound healthy. But I got you a picture! And since I'm so diligent, I googled it and found you a link to read about it if you're interested.

In the same general vicinity is the Lana'i Cathedral, which the captain told is is the site of many underwater weddings (the wedding party all has to be dive certified, of course).  He said you could find lots of youtube videos on the place, and it turns out he was right.

However, I believe I promised you fish pictures, so I should get on with that.

During the first snorkel spot, I was getting the hang of my new underwater camera and figuring out how to get the best shots of fish underwater.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the best shots occurred at the second site.

Here's a school of stripey fish with a couple of other fishy friends.  Not a great picture, but a lot of fish in one place.

Gabe gave a great onboard fish tutorial and told us the names of most of the fish that we saw, but with my awesome powers of recollection, I've forgotten almost all of them. I do know that almost all the pictures he showed us were butterfly fish, so when in doubt, that's probably what they are. 

This guy? He's a black and red fish. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

But oh hey, if you look in the upper right hand corner of that picture, that's my favorite fish. Unfortunately, the camera doesn't come close to capturing all the colors of this amazing fish.  I actually hunted Gabe down and asked him what fish it was, and it's called a parrot fish.  I took about two dozen pictures of male parrot fish because they're so beautiful. It turns out they travel in schools with one male and several females, including an alpha female. If the male dies, the alpha female actually changes genders and colors over about a week and becomes the male of the group. Nature is weird, boys and girls.

Here's another picture of the elusive parrot fish.  I followed several of these guys around in the first snorkel site and wasn't thrilled with most of my results, but this will have to do (yes, he really is that brightly colored, and actually there are several other colors not captured here).

This pretty little guy is probably a butterfly fish of some variety.  He was quite striking. I called him the orange and white stripey fish, being the poetic sort that I am.

This big blue fella swam close enough to me that he filled up my entire screen. (We're now into the second site in Molokini Crater.)

This black fish is one that I saw all over both sites.  The fish next to him may be a butterfly fish or may be an angel fish; they look almost identical.

This is a sea urchin and a small fish that was tough to photograph.  I was pleased I got a good shot of him -- he was FAST!

These two beauties may be fish that mate for life.  I followed them for a while, and they were definitely traveling together.  I got several pretty good shots of them, but this was my favorite.

This is another fish that I saw in abundance in both sites. I had a tough time getting a good picture of him.  This is about the best one.  He's black with orange spots on his tail, which I believe makes him a type of triggerfish.

Last but not least, this frightening fish is often armed with a photographic device and shoots images of other fish.  In other words, it's me.  =)

Normally I proofread all posts pretty extensively, but I'm checking out of my Oahu hotel in 8 minutes, so I reserve the right to edit this post for content or grammar later!

We're off to the airport to return home.  Aloha, y'all!

Sunset at 10,000 Feet

On Wednesday, we did the classic Maui tourist thing: we went up to the top of Haleakala. Apparently you really want to go at sunrise, where your view is unimpeded by the other mountain on Maui, but it turns out sunrise is early, which is a problem for me and those I'm hanging out with, so we went at sunset instead.

We'd been warned about the frigid weather at that altitude and time of day, so we all took fleeces, windbreakers, or both.  It didn't get really cold until the sun went down, fortunately, and until then, we had some amazing views.

It's not often you find yourself above the clouds.  I think this is what most people think heaven looks like.  I find it hard to disagree.

I almost liked it better when a wispy cloud drifted in front of the sun.  Kind of a surreal look. [Incidentally, all these photos are straight out of the camera; I'll tell you if I mess with a pic before I post it.]

These views were really a bonus; we hadn't expected to see this sort of light magic going on in the clouds (although all of us were snapping photos like mad).

We had hoped to see down inside the crater on top of the mountain, but it was full of clouds too. Still pretty, but not ideal.

And this is a picture of the trail that my hubby went back and hiked today while I went on a snorkeling cruise.  He gets seasick; I don't hike 10 miles at altitude.  I guess we each have our own forms of sanity, no?

Closer to sunset, we got some pictures with actual color in the sky.

And this next one includes the Haleakala observatory.

And last but not least, I'll leave you with one my hubby took of the moon rising.  It's tiny, but you can see the sliver of the moon in the top of this photo.

And with that, I bid you good night.

The Road to Hana

Yes, everyone's favorite part of Maui, the road to Hana. I don't know how people did this back in the days of film cameras: we took over 500 pictures on Tuesday when we drove it. Pretty expensive in terms of film!

I'll spare you most of the craziness and show you the "good stuff," but suffice it to say that if you ever get the chance to drive along this road, you should take it. We didn't even get to finish it because we took so many little side trips. The scenery is amazing. There are many waterfalls, some of which you can see from the road, but many of which you must hike to.

We got much of our information from a book which we found invaluable. There are a couple of things I'd add, but I'll tell you that in this post.

Our first stop is a glorified highway turnout; there was a small parking lot in the Hookipu Park. It's not far down the road. The photo is unretouched in terms of the color of the water, but there is a polarized filter on our camera, which cheats the colors a little. It's fairly true to life, though.

There were some surfers here learning to surf -- the breakers are small and gentle, and they broke for what seemed like a half mile.

The first waterfall we saw was Lower Puohokamoa Falls, or, as we affectionately referred to it, Lower Wannahockaloogie Falls (since the Hawaiian name is so difficult to read).  First the picture, then the advice.

This was the one place we found the guidebook less than completely forthcoming (or maybe it was just outdated).  This waterfall was on private land -- we ended up following some folks through a fence and down a "well-worn path" (quoted from the book) to see it.  In retrospect, we definitely should not have strayed onto private property.  I do wish we'd been warned, though.

Incidentally, there is no sense of scale in the photo above.  This may have been the longest fall we saw all day -- it's 200 feet.  It's just impossible to get that from the photo.

Between the Kaumahina State wayside and the Keanea Peninsula, we stopped at a turnout and took this photo. You can see the road cut into the side of the hill.

We then drove to the Keanea Peninsula, had some of the fantastic banana bread there (sold warm, just like your mama would), and shared our table with this cute little guy.

Then we trundled down to the end of the peninsula, where I took this pic of my honey with the waves crashing behind him.  I'm kind of fond of him, y'know.

This staircase, completely surrounded by dead branches, was at the Wailua State Wayside.  At the top was an overlook where you could see the town of Wailua -- very pretty.

One of the two coolest waterfalls we saw was called the Three Bears Falls, and it's easy to see why in the picture.

This falls is visible from the road, but this shot isn't possible without a good zoom lens.  In our case, we hiked down to the falls (detailed instructions in our handy-dandy book, of course). In many cases, we talked to other people who had the same book and were doing the same things, but in this case, we were the only ones near the falls. It was a challenging hike -- or rather, the first step down off the road was a challenge.  Also, there is no parking near this falls, so we parked at the next turnout up the road and walked back (less than a quarter mile, but apparently no one else was willing to do it).  Well worth it to get the close-up view of this beautiful waterfall, in my opinion.

We naturally had to get a shot of me and my sock monster while we were there.  He was our mascot for the trip.  I will likely do a blog post of just the shots with him since it's turned into such a joke now.

I'm not sure if you can see the stains on the bottom of my pants, but I got those climbing down to these falls.  Follow the instructions; we took another way down and that made it more of a challenge than it needed to be.

Next waterfall was at Pua'a Ka'a State Park.  There is a wimpy waterfall that's easy to see when you walk in, and there is (quoting the book again) an "awkward trail" to another falls father in.  I thought that was a curious phrase to use, but there's a darn good reason it's called an "awkward trail."  It's a bit of a challenge, for one, but it's also not every day you get to walk along an aqueduct!  Just don't look down over the side if you have a fear of heights.

And this is your reward for reaching the end of the trail.  I loved this waterfall.

It drops into a large blue pool.  I was so upset that I wasn't wearing a swimsuit at this point -- it looked awfully inviting.

Here's me and my hubby -- and my buddy the sock monster -- down by the waterfall.

No, I'm not sunburned.  I just turn that color after a hike down an awkward trail or two.

By this time, we were pretty exhausted and waterfalled out.  Fortunately, the last one we came to was right on the road.  Or right under it.  But first I'll show you its namesake road (with my buddy the sock monster, natch).

We were punchy enough by this time that the road and waterfall name amused us to no end. Imagine our amusement when we actually saw the waterfall (photographed from above on the bridge, this is Makapipi Falls).

We hadn't had anything to eat all day other than our banana bread snack, so we stopped at the Nahiku Marketplace, where I got an excellent Kalua Pig bowl (pork and rice, to which I added BBQ sauce).

We then put our tired selves back into the car for the drive back, stopping back at our first stop to catch the sunset, which is where I will leave you, dear readers.  I hope you've enjoyed our photo tour down the road to Hana.  Come again!