Endless Summer Tiny World

I am finally off the ship and am now on vacation permanently…. for at least a year I hope!! I ended up my contract in a bar I had been in for four months… which gets tiring, it’s like having ground hog week over and over again. That is the reason I didn’t have many posts. I worked my bar all day and had no more than two hours off during a day but had the nights off, so my adventures consisted of dinners out. It is very strange thinking of being done. I am not really sad because I still get to see everyone last week and this week while I’m in hawaii with mom, and I am too excited about my trip around the world to be very sad. But I will definitely miss all the great friends and people that I work with on ship. That is the hardest part about leaving is saying bye to all the people. But I know I will keep in touch with them, and when I am back and settled I will visit people and have people around the US to visit!

After I got off ship my mom flew out here to hawaii to visit cause she has never seen any of the state. So I have been here in hawaii for two weeks and have one more to go before I go back to the mainland. Last week we were on the big island staying in Kona at a very nice resort. The surf out here has been huge this winter, so a lot of the beautiful beaches north of kona were closed. But we definitely were still able to find things to do. We took a boat out to where the lava flows into the ocean, unfortunately the lava wasnt flowing into the ocean, but we still saw some lava and some trees spontaneously combust into flames since the ground they were on was too hot! It was very cool to do. We also went to the national park and to the macadamia nut farm. Luckily the ship was in port that day so we were joined by some of my ship friends. We also spent our days driving around the island and even drove up and down the waipio valley…. which was crazy since it is such a huge hill and you can only make it up and down in four – wheel drive. We also drove up to the top of Mauna kea the large volcano on the big island and saw people snowboarding on the island of hawaii….kinda strange!

We are now in Kauai and have been enjoying the sun and almost secluded beaches a lot! We have also taken a boat out along the napali coastline and have driven to waimea canyon and the kalalau lookout. Today a bunch of people from the ship are going to come and visit and hang out with us and tomorrow we will bike the coast trail by kapa’a. We head to oahu on saturday for our last week and will be seeing the island there. I then head from there to Colorado for a weekend and then back to wisconsin. I only have about 6 weeks until I am off on my first part of my trip and I can’t wait, but I have lots of stuff I need to get and lots to prepare for, some I am able to do from here, but not all! I also have a bridal shower for my sister to plan, so I think I am going to be very busy visiting everyone before I leave and preparing for the trip! I am so excited though!