geraciblog 

With my birthday being this week – many wonderful people have been calling and chatting. The one question that everyone seems to be asking is – How am I doing going from full-time work to stay-at-home mom??? and the answer that no one expected is – AMAZING. Marion and I are just loving our time together. We spend our cool fall days going to parks and playgrounds – feeding ducks and walking our dog Alvin. We giggle, dance around our kitchen eating oatmeal in the mornings and sometimes we even butt heads but we are enjoying every minute of it. So thank you for all of the calls and the love that has been sent out to me this year. I have taken the big plunge into full-time motherhood and Marion is the cutest in her waterwings!

From Breakfast with Marion

From Breakfast with Marion

We recently got a chance to catch up with Jesse's Aunt Mary and Jean Jaques. We had a great lunch and got a chance to take a cute picture with one of Marion's favorite Great Aunts!

From Aunt Mary

A few weeks ago Marion and I made the long trip East to see family and friends. Unfortunately I broke my phone/camera so the only pictures I have are from my dear friend Teresa. Lots of fun was had by all!

From Daytona, FL

From Daytona, FL

From Daytona, FL

From Daytona, FL

Today we spent most of the day exploring the Hawai'i Volcano National Park. The Big Island is home to five volcanoes: one is extinct, two are dormant, one is active, and the other one, Kilauea, is very active. We spent most of today learning about and hiking on Kilauea. Our first stop is a scenic view along the rim of the caldera. From this lookout we could see steam and sulfer dioxide smoke billowing out of a crater called Halema'uma'u. Although we could not see the lava in the crater, this is apparently the real deal. There's a bubbling floor of lava a few hundred feet down in there. Not only that, it had just erupted at the beginning of the month and doubled the diameter of the crater. The downside of this is that it emitted too much poisonous gas for many of the cool trails and roads to be open.

As it turned out there were still enough great trails to keep us busy until Marion required down time. First we did a short hike through a lava tube. This is a channel where the lava once flowed under the surface of the hardened rock, but the source dried up. Once all of the lava flows out, it leaves a cavernous tunnel which we now get to walk through courtesy of the Department of the Interior.

Across the street of the lava tube was a trail down the side of the crater down to the crater floor. This is a second, smaller crater (called Kilauea Iki) to the east of the main caldera. The interesting thing about this crater is that it was a lava lake a little less than 50 years ago, and it took about 35 years to cool completely. From the lookout point we could see people that looked like specks of dust walking across the bottom of the crater. It was only a couple of miles to get down there, so we decided to give it a go. We were almost there when Jackie stepped on a tree root the wrong way and twisted her ankle. She slowly started to walk back up while I ran down to the bottom with Marion on my back. When I got there a snapped a few quick pictures and started running back up. I caught up with Jackie about 2/3 of the way back up and showed her what we saw down there. It was a pretty cool landscape. The three of us slowly walked back to the top.

After the hiking and the injury we decided to go to the warm pond a few miles down the road from our bungalow. We discovered this place at the end of Day 2 and decided to go back at the end of this long day at the volcano. This pond is heated by natural springs that pass near the underground magma, and it is cooled by the ocean which flows into it from the other side–the water was probably around 95F. Just what the doctor ordered after day of hiking.

the Geracis at a smoking crater on the Kiluea volcano

Halema'uma'u crater at Kiluea

                 
Marion runs and laughs at the rim of the volcano

the Geracis stroll trrough a lava tube

Marion and Jesse pose in the bottom of the Kiluea Iki crater

the Geracis take in the view from the rim of the Kiluea Iki crater

relaxing in the warm pond

We spent our fourth day, mainly on the beach. On the east side of the Big Island, because of all the volcanic activity, there are not too many traditional white sandy beaches. Instead the beaches are often black sand. We went to two black sand beaches this day.

We started by driving along the Red Road. A beautiful 10 mile scenic drive across the southeast coast of the island. At the end of the Red Road, we found the first black sand beach near Kalapana after a short (~1/2 mi) hike across a recent hardened lava field. This beach was pretty quiet and would have been a nice place to relax for a while. Marion was sleeping in the car, though, so we continued on.

On the way back, we stopped at an unmarked beach along the way called Kahena. Since Marion had just woken up, we decided to bring down our towels and soak up some sun. After we climbed down the rocks to get to this beach, we stumbled into a very interesting local scene, complete with a massive drum circle, a bonfire, and several people taning without lines. This last feature made us think twice before taking out our camera, so we did not get any pictures there. If you're curious what the beach looks like, I did a quick Google search and found a travel blog that posted a few pictures of the beach.

breakfast on the lanai behind our bungalow

hike across the lava flow to get to the Kalapana black sand beach

black sand beach

On our first full day on the eastern side of the island we did some exploring of the area. We began by driving the Jeep topless down a long bumpy lava road. Apparently this strange moonscape area used to be the lazy beach town of Kapoho before 1960, when the volcano decided to go that way.

Next we visited the Hilo farmer's market. It was fun to see all of the strange fruits and vegetables local to the island. For example, they have this thing called the dragon fruit that looks like a cross between a pomegranate and a cactus. They also sold these huge avocados that stayed green when they were ripe. One thing we had trouble finding was raspberries, which is a staple of Marion's diet. One guy at the farmer's market was selling only raspberries. He said that he started growing them because he couldn't live without his berries. He and Marion must be kindred spirits. When he found out that the berries were for Marion, he gave us an extra pack for free. 

Finally we drove further north and hiked around a short trail through rain forest to see a couple of large waterfalls–Kahuna Falls and Akaka Falls. We gots some good pictures of Akaka Falls.

Marion enjoys the bumpy ride through the 1960 lava flow moonscape

Marion and Jesse under a hugh banyan near the Hilo farmer's market

Marion and Jesse hike through the (paved) rain forest trail to the waterfalls

Jesse points to Akaka Falls

Jackie's happy to be at the Falls

serene view from the Akaka Falls parking lot