An Update From Hawaii Before Camping

We've had a good few days here in Hawaii so far. You may think that means we've been hitting up the beaches everyday or doing something outdoors to enjoy the warm weather. But that really hasn't been the case. Our friends Becky and Brian were kind enough to let us stay at their place while they were away visiting family for Thanksgiving. So we've just been staying in since it's just been nice having a place with a kitchen, bed, internet, etc. In fact, 2 out of the last 3 days the main thing we got out for was to go to a few grocery stores to find supplies for lasagna and tacos. 

We did get out yesterday though more than we thought we would. When we were here last our friends took us along to their church, and we got to meet some of their friends there. And given that what we miss most right now is being part of a community, we ventured off on Sunday to go back to that same church with the hopes of seeing some familiar faces. And we did! And on top of that we got invited along to go out to brunch and hangout at the beach afterwards. 

Brunch was extra fancy. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet at The Officers Club at Kaneohe Bay, which is a military base. Normally we can't get into such places, but the folks that invited us along work for the government/military, and they are able to sponsor people to bring them on. It's pretty cool. I had forgotten how much of the Hawaii island life is impacted by the military. I wonder how much one would miss out on without having some kind of military connection here. Maybe more reflection on that some other time.

Fancy fountain outside The Officers Club.

Where we ate brunch

The view from the club house overlooking an ocean-side golf course.

We did not take any pictures from our beach outing. It was kind of a gray day. Plus we figure we're here all week. We just wanted to spend time with these new friends. We had some great conversations about careers, hobbies, and just general life stuff.  It was just what we needed. 

And today Becky and Brian return from their travels. We're quite excited to see them! We've been looking forward to seeing friends for quite some time. As a result of their return we will be giving back their place to them. So that they can recover from their travels and have time/space to settle back into a normal routine, we're going to be doing some camping for the next few days (maybe for a full week).  

We're hoping that we'll be able to spend some evenings with them still, but we're not sure at this point how much we're going to see them. This is a bit of a bummer to us since our expectations when we initially planned this part of the trip were that we were here to spend time with them. We knew before that we'd be doing some camping to give them some space, but we never really worked out the details of how that would impact our time with them. As it turns out, only private campgrounds (not state or county) on Oahu allow camping on Wednesday and Thursday nights, which we need, and these are all the way across the island from Becky and Brian. So as a result of that and a few other things camping + spending time with them might be more complicated then we thought. *Sigh* 

On top of that an event that our friends back in Grand Rapids do every year called The Firewalker Film Festival (where we watch 3 terrible movies and vote on which one was worse) ended up getting scheduled the weekend before we return. Even months ago we were pretty that we were going to miss it, but given that we're really missing our friends and that we're missing the event by just a few days makes it a little bit harder.

As a result of all this, the past few days we have done some research into changing our flight to leave a few days earlier, but as you might expect the price to do so is quite high. It wouldn't have been as bad if there wasn't a flat $125 per person change fee. But given that there is that fee plus the difference of the ticket price, it's really hard to justify given we're on a tight budget.

We still might keep an eye on flight prices, but we're doubting anything will change. So for now the plan is to stick it out here. I know, I'm sure you are all rolling your eyes given that sticking it out in Hawaii doesn't sound like much of hardship. We totally agree. This is a pretty awesome place. I'm sure we'll still have a great time with some beach days, hikes, maybe some more rock climbing, and many other things. We would appreciate your thoughts and prayers for the camping part though. We usually enjoy a good few days of camping, but a full week of sleeping on the ground sounds a bit brutal given the state our aging bodies. (Again we didn't think that one through when we made our plans many months ago... *sigh*) Plus we've grown spoiled with access to the comforts of a kitchen, WiFi, and even electricity. So now roughing it may be, well... a bit rough. But in the end these hardships we're choosing to do to ourselves to save on money, so we can't really complain. I think we're going to try to treat this as a time to really unplug for a bit, relax, and reflect on the past few months. As a result, we may not be posting any blog posts during this next week. We'll do our best to still take pictures and post an update either next weekend if we can find some WiFi or when we return.

Thanks for a listening ear. Many of you, our readers, have been in our thoughts a lot recently. We hope and pray you are all doing well. We look forward to seeing many of you soon after we return. 

Cheers