Fire and Rain....

Buddy and I were supposed to hike Waimanu this weekend....the last weekend before school starts. To refresh your memory, Waimanu is quite a vigourous hike with traversing through 9 miles of valleys after you have entered Waipi'o valley. You have to pack EVERYTHING in and bring a water filtration system, because there is no fresh water source....but,  at least there are some waterfalls for obtaining water while camping. It's pretty hardcore, just like us. To prepare for the final countdown, Monday, we went on a 7 mile hike....

We ditched a few non-hardcoreites on the way....and picked up some geocaches.... 

 and some poles....because, who doesn't want to carry unnecessary heavy poles whilst hiking????

Thankfully, we finally reached the top and 

 apparently, Tyler and I are very enthused, while Buddy is.....well, Buddy is just Buddy!

 Wednesday we did a 25 mile bike ride, which included Buddy perfecting this......whatever this is....

 We even started riding through tunnels just to up our coolness ante....

 Somehow, our ride kept cycling back to Shane's work. I'm sure it was to say hi to Shane, because we are a nice loving family (as far as anyone knows, that is)....or maybe it has something to do with the puppy that the base manager keeps in Shane's office....

We may never know, the real answer!!!! Wednesday night, however, we decided to not do Waimanu afterall, since it was going to be heavy rainfall for 2 of the days....we did that the first time, and although we survived, crossing the waterfall fed river and ocean meeting spots would be slightly dangerous (they were pretty scary the first time around), so we opted to cancel our fantastic hike and try again with Buddy's next school break and hope for better weather. Then Wednesday, night a brush fire started near our village.....so that's pretty awesome, it's still going strong and our house has a thick layer of soot and smells like campfire....so it's almost like we went camping. To make our experience complete, we went on a hike away from our village down south at the Kona Cloud Forest Sanctuary....sounds cool and clean airy, right? Not so much... although they aren't under immenant danger of fire (like my house), the lovely tradewinds just reminded me that we need to pick up some marshmallows for s'mores later!!!

We had a blast, stench and all....afterall, you can't live with a Buddy and not welcome the campfire smell when you're used to certain other, more toxic stenches..... So all in all a super fantastic, not sure if we are sad or not about missing Waimanu, day!