April 17, 2022 – June 7, 2022
This blog post picks up where we last left off in Cocoa Beach, Florida. After a nice visit with Adam and our time starting to draw to a close in Florida, on a whim we decided to see if there were any cruises that left from that area that would work with our upcoming schedule. We had seen quite a few ships off the coast, and I had never been on a cruise ship before. It sounded like something fun to do, even if it did border on the impulsive!
Sure enough – Mona found two cruises that would work, and we ultimately decided on a Carnival cruise that went to three islands, and would be out for about a week. It had a stateroom with a small deck overlooking the ocean, and the price seemed pretty reasonable, so… we did it! We did have to get a last-minute COVID test (which came back negative), so that Sunday morning found us in line waiting to get on our cruise ship – along with about 3,000 other people (the ship was quite full).
We started off by exploring the ship – I don’t know the dimensions, but it had about 12 floors, and a wide variety of “venues” both inside and outside. They clearly strive to keep things entertaining and light, with of course a ton of focus on the food and drink side of things! And, we clearly saw that many people on the ship were there to EAT!
We got a quick workout in Sunday night on the ship, which was equipped with a nice workout facility – and not in much demand based on the fact that nearly no one was there! It was located in the high front of the ship, which is a pretty ideal location for looking around, etc. Late that night, Mona started to develop a bit of a cough, and by morning it was getting worse. To make a long story short, Mona ended up spending a large majority of our cruise in our stateroom, quite sick. Bad cold-type symptoms, along with some chills, aches, and pains. It wouldn’t be until weeks later that we started to realize that it may have been COVID, despite our negative test from just one day prior. More on that shortly.
With Mona largely laid up, I found myself exploring the ship, working out regularly, and spending quite a bit of time on my computer. Life on the sea was relaxing in many ways, with no cares around meals, where to park, where to get water, keeping up with chores, etc. Our room was conveniently located just a few floors from the main buffet restaurant, where I could easily get food for Ramona and myself, etc. The first island we reached, we decided to just stay on the ship. It was going to be a bit of an ordeal to get off with throngs of other people, and Mona was not feeling well at all.
After another day on the ship, we did get off on Grand Turk island for a look-around. We were lucky enough to find a guy that rented us a golf cart, which was a great way to get around the smallish island. We found Mona some cold medications, and then found a nice beach were I tried my luck at snorkeling. Mona hung out on the sand, and I went in search of ocean life, but with very limited success. Grand Turk was an interesting place – a small economy centered largely on the tourist trade, given the port there for several cruise lines. Life on an island is frequently romanticized, but for most of the people living there, it’s not that simple – there was a lot of poverty to be seen, and I’m sure they’re very dependent on weather and one industry – tourism.
Our next island stop was the Dominican Republic – another beautiful place, but as you start to look around, poverty exists in abundance there as well. Mona decided to stay on the ship as she wasn’t feeling well, and I got off and walked to the nearest village – only a couple of miles. Incidentally, I was the only cruise passenger I saw walking that far. Most people that got off either stayed in a very small spot, or took taxi’s. But… walking is still a great way to truly see a place. I got to the village and tried to discuss life on the DR with a waitress at a restaurant, but between my broken Spanish and her broken english, we didn’t get too far! With that, it was time to walk back to the ship – our port stays were generally fairly short (4-6 hours), so you did not have a lot of time to truly explore.
After the DR, we started the ship journey home – the seas were a bit rougher, but on a boat that size, it would take some truly large waves to really be effected. We made it back to Cape Canaveral without any real incident, through Mona was still not feeling great. We were both a bit surprised that I hadn’t come down with what she had, given how much time we spent in a small state room!
After our cruise was complete, it was time to head down to Savannah, Georgia. We expected it to feel quite a bit like Charleston, but we were honestly a bit disappointed. Staying “in the thick of it” was going to be expensive (and difficult to park the van), so we stayed on the outskirts at a Marriott Courtyard. We made our way into the downtown area for some site seeing and for dinner, but felt like Savannah just didn’t have the charm of Charleston. Nonetheless, we had a nice stay, and Mona was starting to recover a bit more from being sick on the cruise, and we even got in a nice bike ride. We only stayed a couple nights, and then it was time to make our way to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
We arrived in Chattanooga on April 25th, and stayed at a low-key campground out of town that was there primarily for hunters. There were a few other campers, but we didn’t have a problem finding a spot to park and stay. We liked the “vibe” in Chattanooga – we had a nice dinner in the downtown area after we arrived, and then went to a climbing gym that was right in the heart of town. By pure coincidence, we met the parents of a guy that was a coach for the University of Utah’s climbing team back when Drew was on the team, and I’d actually met their son (Casey) a number of years ago! We had a short visit with them, and also had a good time climbing (though our fitness level for climbing made it none too easy).
The following day, we went up an “incline rail” that took us from a lower part of town up to an overlook. After buying tickets, we had a 10 minute ride up a steep slope to get to the top. There was a nice park at the top that spoke of the history around the high point during civil war days, and we had time to walk around and see the city and surrounding areas. After our time doing the incline rail, we spent a bit more time downtown, and then headed to my cousin’s house in Dayton TN. One of the joys of traveling like we are is that we allow time in our schedule to explore and simply look around. There are tons of resources on-line that make finding things easy, especially the more popular things. However, sometimes we’ll come across smaller things that don’t get mentioned nearly as much that are a lot of fun to see.
My cousin Susan, her husband (Jim), and kids live in Dayton, and it just so happened that their youngest daughter was part of piano recital the day we arrived, and we had a chance to go. After her recital we went and parked the van at Jim and Susan’s, and had dinner with them, as well as breakfast the following morning. It was nice to catch up with them and to see where they lived. I had not seen Susan and Jim for many years when they’d made a short stop in Salt Lake City, so it was good to catch up.
From there, it was time to head to the Smokey Mountains! We had several campgrounds in mind, and Ramona had also lined up several hikes for us to do once there. Before getting to the “official” Smokey mountains, we spent a couple nights at the Douglas Headwater campground. We had a nice spot overlooking a very clear, clean, large lake, and also had the chance to get out and do some paddling with the SUP’s. The campground was very clean, and the lake was great for paddling. We had good weather as well, which always makes van life much, much more enjoyable.
We then proceeded to the Cades Cove campground, and ultimately made our way to the Elkmont campground in the Smokies. We spent most of our time hiking while in the Smokies. It was a great opportunity to experience small parts of the Appalachian Trail. The scenery, while pretty, is not as “majestic” as what you experience in a place like Colorado or Utah, but it was still really pleasant. We met a very helpful trail worker one day that gave us some tips on parts of the Appalachian trail to consider for future backpacking, and also met some young people from outside the USA that were out exploring Tennessee. While we enjoyed our time and the scenery in the Smokies, it wasn’t a park that we thought necessarily deserved to be the most visited national park in the United States. The rolling hills and vegetation are nice, and you can certainly enjoy time there, but it doesn’t have the “wow” factor that goes along with so many of the other national parks across the country.
The campgrounds were nice in the Smokies, but not super memorable (as I sit here and write this up more than a month after we were there, it’s hard for me to remember a lot about them).
After the Smokies, it was time to head to Florence, SC to visit my sister, and to prepare for our journey back to Utah, where we planned on first going to Oregon to climb Mt Hood, and then to Hawaii for some time with our kids.
We made it to Lynne and Doug’s place on May 5th, and planned on spending several days there before flying to Utah. Our plan was to leave the van at her place for nearly a month while we were off doing other things. While at Lynne’s, Mona started to have a few more symptoms similar to what she had on the cruise, and chalked it up to allergies from the dogs, and perhaps the vegetation in the area. We enjoyed checking out the new house that Lynne and Doug had built! It’s a great house on some acreage, and a definite upgrade from their previous place. We had a chance to catch up on a few errands, order a fan part for the van, get my hair cut, etc. We also had a chance to visit with Lynne and Doug, and towards the end of our stay, even made it out to a concert starring a number of “b-rated” black soul bands. We were, quite literally, the only white people in the audience, with a gal sitting next to us even asking us if we were OK (I’m sure she thought we were crazy). It was a fun night, and a chance to experience some culture that we don’t often come in contact with.
Alas it was time to fly to Utah, and Ramona was ready to escape her allergies. I was starting to feel a bit “off” as well. Doug was good enough to drive us to Columbia, SC where we had a flight to Salt Lake City. By the time our flight landed in SLC, I was starting to wonder if all we had were allergies… We decided to rest up that first night in Salt Lake, hoping to sleep off whatever was ailing us. Unfortunately, the next day wasn’t much better. As we knew we were going to be seeing Ramona’s parents after climbing Mt Hood, we decided to take a COVID test just to be on the safe side. After waiting just seconds for the in-home tests to complete, we learned what was ailing us… COVID. We made it a long time through the pandemic without contracting the nasty stuff, but our turn had finally arrived.
This put an immediate kink in our plans to climb Mt. Hood in just a few short days. Based on how we both felt, it was unclear if we could even accomplish the climb, not to mention the fact that we would have been exposing others in the process. We made an easy (but hard) decision to cancel our plans for the climb, and managed to find a condo up in Park City where we could hunker down for a week and work on our recovery.
The condo we stayed in was very close to the Park City Ski Area, and came complete with a hot tub. As this was off season for Park City, it was a quiet place to say, and we were able to rest and recuperate without coming in much contact with many people. I managed to run several times, but between the elevation and COVID, it felt like I was doing more harm than good even trying to exercise. We honestly didn’t do much – we caught up on a little TV watching, read, and did a lot of Sudoku puzzles! There’s not a lot to write about, other than to say that by the time we were due to leave, we were feeling better, and had a high level of confidence that we were no longer contagious.
After getting everything packed up from the Park City condo, we headed up to Rexburg on May 20th for a short stay with Ramona’s parents. We both enjoy our time with Don and Marsha. For me, it’s a bit like going home to a small town where farming is still a big part of life, and the community takes on a different feel as compared to the big cities. It’s alway very nice to hear the latest Rexburg news, and to catch up on things. We made it out to Don’s farm, and also went to see the house Marsha grew up in, as it will not be there for much longer (Marsha and her siblings sold their home place last year). We spent some time catching up, and also had a chance to see Amy and Eli for Sunday lunch.
From Rexburg, we made our way down to Bluffdale to see Stephanie and Dan. We had dinner with them (along with Ally, Cory, Jack, and Adam), and the next day it was time to depart for Maui! Thankfully both Mona and I felt like we’d largely recovered from Covid, though we both felt like we’d lost some level of fitness from having to sit around and do very little for an extended period.
On Maui, I’d arranged to do a downwinding run with a well-known SUP racer (Connor Baxtor). I was excited for the run. Mona decided to sit it out as she still was not feeling strong, and the downwinding run is not something you can easily bail out of once you’re out on the ocean. We met Connor at the launch point, and he turned out to be a very nice guy that had some great paddling advice for me. The run was hard – one of the hardest things I’ve done in quite some time. It was likely some combination of having had COVID (the big thing), Connor pushing me to move faster to really leverage the waves, and me repeatedly falling with the race board I was on. By the time we’d finished, I could not consistently stand up, and was forced to my knees. That in turn rubbed the skin off the tops of my toes, so by the time we got out of the water, I was a bit of a mess. A good lunch helped, and we decided to enjoy a drive around Maui as a way to just relax and enjoy the island.
Our first drive had us driving around the island counter-clockwise, up to Kahakuloa. We found a small shop (more of a house, really) to get some banana bread and shave ice, where we visited with a woman that had lived on Oahu literally streets away from where Ramona grew up. As we made our way around the island over to Kanapali and Lahaina, we felt a bit drawn to the north-east part of the island. It’s not overrun with the tourism scene, and also is quite green and beautiful. In addition to those things going for it, it’s also close to some things we love to do – downwinding, kite surfing, beaches, and not even that far away from some mountain biking. Add in that it’s not very far from the airport, Costco, and other things that are very handy, and it just felt like a good place to perhaps explore a few properties. We’re not in the market to buy anything quickly, but… it’s always fun to look.
That night we found a few interesting things to go look at the following day, and Grant also had a place he thought we should look at. We found an empty lot that we really liked as we drove around north of Wailuku. It was a very unique place with stunning views and no close neighbors. It was 7.4 acres, so this was not just your typical residential lot in an existing neighborhood.
We were lucky enough to contact a realtor on short notice that took us on a tour of the property. We liked it well enough to get excited about it, and started to form a list of questions we’d have to answer before getting too serious about it. The item that bubbled to the top of the list was a building assessment – a way of understanding just what could be built on the place, and what it could entail. The realtors put us in contact with a builder that they thought could help us out, and… he was willing to do just that, but was going on vacation for 2 weeks, so we’d have to wait. As this blog is largely chronological, we’ll come back to this a bit later.
One other thing we did on Maui was take the ferry over to Lanai for a few hours. It was fun to see another one of the islands and one that Mona had never been too. We hung out on the beach, did a short hike and walked around the Four Seasons, then back to Maui.
After Maui, it was time to head to Kauai and meet the kids! We made it to Kauai via a short flight on Southwest, and our first stop was… Costco! Costco can always be a bit of a life saver for us – food and staples are almost always priced quite a bit better than the grocery stores, and with 3 boys, we knew we’d need quite a few things! After stocking up at Costco, we made our way up to Princeville. Kauai is truly a beautiful island. The landscape and the greenery are truly stunning. It reminded both Mona and I of our time there a few years ago when we backpacked the Napali coast, and we were glad to be back to spend a week in such a rich tropical setting. We made it to the condo we were staying at and we were very happy with what we found. The condo had a big kitchen, plenty of living space, nice rooms, and also some beach items that we could use, including a surf board. No sooner had we gotten settled into the condo, and it was time to drive back down to the airport and pick up the kids.
After picking up Adam, Jack, Carmen, and Drew from the airport, we made it back to Princeville and planned on spending some time at the beach the following day. The day after traveling is sometimes a bit “sluggish” since it’s a long haul over to Hawaii, and the time zone change always seems to leave a person just a bit off. We spent some time at the beach just hanging out, and also did some surfing and boogie boarding. We didn’t have very big waves, but it was still fun to play in the ocean.
We also hiked up to the amazing Hanakapai’ai waterfall on the trail that leads into the Na Pali coast. It was hot, and just far enough in that we were feeling pretty sweaty and dirty by the time we made it. The water was cool, and swimming over to and under the waterfall was a real treat! We spent some time at the waterfall before making our way back to the trail head. Hiking in the jungle is always a nice mix of beauty and sweat! We still felt mildly weak from our bout with COVID, and the walk in felt like a full day. Everyone had a good time.
On another day, we took a boat ride out to the Napali coast that departed from the west side of the island. The ride out was beautiful, as we had a chance to see the coast from the ocean, and we were also lucky enough to see quite a few dolphins. We had a small(ish) private boat, and had great weather on the day we went out. We were able to go into some of the caves that exist as you get to the “heart” of the Na Pali coast, and learned more about the ecosystem from our boat captain. We managed to get some good pictures of the coast, and on the way back we stopped at an excellent snorkeling spot abundant with wildlife. We swam with dozens of turtles, and really had a nice time in the water before making our way back. The tour took the better part of a day, and was well worth the cost and time it takes to drive to the other side of the island.
We also had a chance to go up to Waimea Canyon and did some site seeing in that area. As we were relatively close to the sugar monument Ramona’s dad oversaw, and we stopped so the kids could check that out, and did just a bit of shopping in town.
Our time in Kauai went by fast. We also managed to do a bit of running, snorkeling, and site seeing around Princeville, and everyone had a good time just relaxing and being on a fairly open and flexible schedule. Kauai can feel like a small island, but its beauty makes up for the small size. As our week came to a close, we got the kids back to the airport for a morning departure, and then went back to the condo to get everything wrapped up, and to check out. We had all day to bum around the island, as our flight did not depart until that evening. As usual, the flight back to LA was long, and the cabin was cold! Mona was cold the entire time, but did manage to sleep a little bit. We had a very long haul for the return, as we were heading all the way back to Columbia SC, where Doug had graciously volunteered to pick us up. By the time we made it to Lynne’s house the following evening, we were ready for a long sleep. Mona was surprised when she slept in to 1:00 the next afternoon!
