Food

Yesterday was an incredible day. The date was April 8th, and it consisted of an absolutely wonderful trip through northwest Oregon to the coast with two awesome pit stops. The country up here is sooo beautiful. I don't think I've been any place in the States that compares, though that's hard to say definitively since much of the country is gorgeous. Up here in Oregon, though, it's all so green if not a little soggy from the constant drizzle the helps keep up appearances. Hills rise up in every direction covered either by forests and grassland or nice houses. We even got to see some low, snow-capped mountains as we drove! The pit stops were just as exciting as the scenery...

At first I was planning on blogging every night of my vacation. Obviously I missed last night so that's a wash. Really it's just a ploy to have enough material to write about.

I'll start with Saturday morning. Honolulu has a place with a famous recipe for banana pancakes and macadamia nut sauce. It's a tiny, hole-in-the-wall kind of place called Boots & Kimo's. There are about 6 or 7 tables, and there's usually enough people there that they need to take your order outside before they find a table for you. This is more than made up by the sheer delight that is the pancakes. I've been keeping a list of foods that I expect to find in Heaven. These were just added.

For the afternoon, we were taken to the Bellows Air Force station. During the week, the beaches are closed for maneuvers, but on the weekends, half the beach is open to the public, and half is open to military personnel and their guests. John's brother-in-law is in the Air Force, so we got to be on the military side.

I've been to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico before, but neither of them were the brilliant turquoise that the Pacific had this day. Several good pictures were taken, and you can find some of them here.

A couple days ago Ryan suggested that I should start blogging here. That sounded reasonable, and now that I'm on vacation, I feel like I've got stuff to talk about.

The count right now, is that I've been up for just over 23 hours. I woke up at 5 this morning to gather the travelers and catch the flight out of Louisville International at 7:30. After some connecting flights to Chicago and Los Angeles, we finally arrived in Honolulu at 4:30 Hawai'i time. For those of you keeping track at home, that's a 6-hour time difference.

In short, Hawai'i is amazing. As was recently said, "it's like someone set the thermostat outside to 'perfect'". Used to a long Louisville winter, I couldn't agree more. Of course, the locals say they think it's kind of chilly, but that's their prerogative. Even after dark, it's still a pleasant 70-something degrees.