We Are The Thorsons: Wowzers, where has the time gone!?!

Time flies when you are having fun!

Saturday
We had a busy, busy day! We started at 10am by having surf lessons! Surfing is sooo much fun. After some really short instructions, we were all given our boards and we paddled out in the ocean to catch some waves. Surfing, believe it or not, is not that hard. I'm not super good at it, but it is rather easy to stand up on the boards. Keeping my balance was another story though. All six of us were able to catch waves and stand up on our boards. We had so much fun! There were even sea turtles surfing with us :)

We were giving instructions to bail off the board if we were coming too close to shore (there was no beach, it was all lava rock - ouch!) On my second wave, I actually rode it in for quite a while and then realized 'oh, crap, I'm gonna slam into lava rock!' So I belly flopped off the side of my board, ending up cutting my thumb and smacking my bad knee right into a rock. Oh....my....gosh...did that ever hurt. It took me a while to even straighten my leg out afterward. My thumb bleed for the remainder of our surfing extravaganza :( Nothing like rubbing salt in your wound!!

We all survived. Wade cut his hand as well so I wasn't the only one and Sean had a bleeding knee by the time we ended. My knee had a goose egg which has now turned into a nice bruise. Battle scars - ha! There was someone taking pictures of us surfing but we have yet to get any pictures from that. When I do, I'll be sure to post them here (but only if I don't look like a complete fool!).

After surfing we went to turtle beach. This is a tiny little beach that not many people know about. There is a sign that says 'public shoreline access' but the get to the beach, you have to walk between these two houses on a sidewalk which many probably mistake as private property. Anyways, you walk down a little sidewalk and then cross over a bunch of lava rock to get to this little beach where a bunch of sea turtles come to hang out. The sea turtles did not disappoint. They were there, waiting for us. We saw three different turtles during our time there. They are really friendly and swim right up to you. Sea turtles have a special coat on there shell that keeps them healthy so we didn't touch them but they most certainly touched us with their legs while swimming around us!

Hello!

After we got home from all of our activities, I was feeling stir crazy (that's what happens when we never get 'me' time). So Wade and I hopped in the car intended to go grad a drink (yes, it was one of those days) but instead we drove up the coast to go check out a snorkeling beach. We didn't quite make it to the beach as we turned off the road where there was a little 'public shoreline access' sign. We drove down this bumpy little dirt road. When the road ended, we hiked a little trail down to the ocean. We both sat on the lava rocks, talked on our cellphones and saw an amazing sunset. It felt really good to get away for a bit. I didn't have my regular camera with me so these next pictures are all from my cellphone.

Dirt road leading to the ocean {disregard the big bug smear - ha!}

Of course we did some yoga :-)

After heading back home, we grilled shrimp and potatoes and had a little family dinner before heading out to the Blue Dragon for some live music. The Blue Dragon is just down the road from us and is actually a neat little place. You walk 'inside' but it is open air. We had some good drinks and fun times people watching! It is funny what people do on vacation sometimes - ha!

Sunday
We packed up our stuff and headed for the volcano on the south part of the island (about a 2.5 hour drive). When we got to the national park, we stopped at the steam vents and then drove to and hiked a lava tube. A lot of the locals had recommended we go and see the lava at night time. So we borrowed flashlights from our landlords and drove to the night lava viewing area and then found out - nope, you can't walk to the lava unless you pay $50 bucks :( It was a huge disappointment. We ended up staying in the viewing area until it got dark and only got to see like tiny 'campfires' in the distance :( We were all kind of bummed we spent a gorgeous day in the car going to do something that we wouldn't be able to do. Oh well.

This is Mauna Kea (where the observatory is).

We stopped on our way to the volcano to see pe'epe'e falls.

We didn't stay long - locals like to break into vehicles here so we took a couple pictures and headed back to the car as there were some sketchy people there (yes, we profile).