Dolphins and turtles and whales! Oh my!

Nice day in the water today on Maui.

I took my buddy Ice on a whale watching trip with the Pacific Whale Foundation.  As I have mentioned before, out of the whole whale season (roughly November to April), the best time to see whales is full moon February to full moon March.  That is according to one of the naturalists on a boat a couple of years ago.  Well, here we are in late February and the whales were hopping and breaching today!

We started off with a little greeting by a couple of dolphins.  They swam past the ship soon after we left the harbor.  I’m not used to seeing the dolphins, but I managed to get off a good shot as they swam under the boat and appeared right beside us.

 

Then, on to the whales.  We saw several whales “logging.”  This is when they are just kind of floating horizontal on the top of the water.  Just hanging out.  We saw some blow from a mom and calf.  We saw some whales from far away.

My buddy made some comments like: “Well, at least the boat trip is nice,”  and “We saw more whales from the beach.”  But, true to form – the whale watch provided plenty of breaching whale shots.  In fact, one whale breached several times right off the side of the boat and it was the closest I have ever seen a whale breach. 

Ta da!

and……….

 

and……..

 

Finally, as we made our way back to the harbor, the captain suddenly slowed the boat.  For……no….not another whale.  A little Honu was about to cross our path!  I barely got him with his little head sticking out of the water.  You can see him at the bottom of the picture.

 

All in all, a good whale watching day.  Aloha!

I’ll leave you with some more visuals from today.

And, one more video to completely bore you.  Same whale breaches twice!

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Yeah, I swam in this ocean today…

…..and I have the scrapes and the headache to prove it!

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Headaches and Hiking

Last week started out pretty crappy but has ended up quite nice.

Monday and Tuesday were the bad headache days.  I had been working on the computer during the day on Monday, then was watching the news.  I was working out while watching TV.  It took me a while to figure out the problem with my TV screen was not really my TV, but my eyes.  I was seeing some areas that seemed strangely pixelated and kept trying to clear up my focus.  I actually called Sweetie at work to find out how late he would be working.  I was feeling unsteady and my head was starting to hurt.  Sweetie got home and I tried rubbing my head around my right eye.  This just made it worse as I then had stabbing pain behind my eyes.  I started blubbering – not so much because of the bad pain but just because it was freaking me out a little and then I felt rush of emotion after I rubbed my head.  Strange.  Noises sounded a little weird to me.  Sweetie said something and I asked “What is wrong with your voice?”  I lay on the couch for a while but was determined to cook dinner for us.  So, I finally got up, made dinner, ate dinner and spent the rest of the evening on the couch and in bed.

So Tuesday rolls around and I tried to stay away from the computer during the morning.  I was trying not to focus too hard on anything.  Makes for a boring morning for me.  I jumped back on in the afternoon.  I turned on the 5 o’clock news and everything just went haywire in my head.  I held up my left hand, put it next to the side of my face, and started waving it all over the place.  But I couldn’t see a thing.  I had lost all peripheral vision on my left side.  I was seeing some spots again and tried to go lay down in bed.  That didn’t help as I got completely nauseous.  I grabbed the phone and went to sit down on the floor next to a trash can.  I called Sweetie again and he asked me how I was doing.  I told him it was much worse than Monday.  I asked him if I had a migraine since he gets them and knows the symptoms.  He said yes and that he was coming home from work (it was after 5 anyway).  This was good to hear because I felt like I really needed some water and a little bit of bread to chew on but I was now sitting on the bathroom floor and was too nauseous and in too much pain to walk out to the kitchen.  Sweetie came home, brought me some bread and water, and got me to go back to bed.  He brought me a damp cloth to put on my head.  But it smelled strange to me.  Everything smelled bad.  I told him everything smelled weird and he said that was part of the migraine too.  I chewed a few bites of bread, took an Advil and finally managed to fall asleep.  I woke up a couple hours later and managed to eat some chicken noodle soup.

I went to see an optometrist on Wednesday and got a new prescription for my glasses.  That should help a little bit.  This new optometrist figured out what my old doc learned long ago – my brain is stubborn (that’s how my old doc put it).  I am very farsighted in my left eye.  And there is a big difference in the prescriptions for my two eyes.  But, my brain won’t accept all the correction it needs for my left eye.  So, instead of relaxing and accepting the lense’s help to see clearer, my brain fights really hard to try and focus on its own.  This puts more strain on my brain.  As the years pass, my eye muscles will relax and my brain will accept more correction.  This new doc said she is giving me a prescription slightly stronger than my brain seemed willing to accept, but that I should get used to it and it will help my brain relax a little. 

Is that what caused the migraines?  It could be a few things.  I think eye strain probably contributed.  I think I haven’t been sleeping enough lately.  We also had pretty bad vog at the beginning of last week.  It comes over from the volcano on the Big Island, across Maui, all the way to Oahu.  The air was just thick with vog on Monday and Tuesday of last week. 

Anyway, I’ve felt my eyes get very tired this week, but no major headaches, thank goodness.

And!  The vog finally left with our lovely Maui winds and Sweetie and I managed to get a hike in on Sunday.  Hooray!!  I’ve been wanting to hike more.  Hard to do when Sweetie works 7 days a week.  But true to his word – he told me “Just plan it and I will be there.”  So, I picked a trail-head on the northwest side, we packed up my backpack, found the trail, and away we went.  So nice to walk outside for a while.

So, to end on a good note, here are some pictures from our hike this weekend.  Aloha!

 

 

Waterfalls!

 

The trail was very muddy.  It was a little comical watching us try to get back down the hill.  There were very steep parts at the top of the hike and we slipped a lot in the wet clay mud.

 

A great view of Kahului at the northern end of Maui’s isthmus.

 

 

 

Sweetie has to get his close-ups.

 

 

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What’s a Girl Gotta do to get some Fried Food Around Here?!

Finally!

I finally made it to the Maui County Fair.  It seems I am away from the island every year around the beginning of October.  Ok, so last year I was getting ready for my wedding.  I was still bummed to miss the Fair. 

But yesterday, Sweetie and I made it!  Hooray.  We shelled out our 5 bucks for……uhhhhhh….  ummm.. … ………… ….errrrrrrrr………..what has to be the smallest County fair I have ever attended.  Even the Yolo County Fair – which was free at the time – was a little larger, I think.  But!  No matter.  We knew it was a small affair.  Ha ha.  It was very local and very quaint.  With prize-winning star fruit and bread fruit and lots and lots of roosters.  ‘Cause we got a LOT of roosters on Maui (though not nearly as many as Kauai, I found out). 

We walked around the cool Orchid show.  Saw the local art from elementary school through high school.  Walked through the small livestock and poultry area.  Watched as unsupervised kids tried to take swipes at the roosters.  Walked through the arts and crafts tent.  And we went in search of fried food.

Jeez! There was a serious lack of fried food at this fair.  Of course, they had the fried twinkie booth.  But I wanted lunch, not dessert.  Sweetie and I walked past every food booth.  Past the loco-moco plate, mochiko chicken, and poi mochi.  Past the pork adobo, Irish stew, BBQ pork, and nachos.  Past the dry mein, chow fun, lau lau, and chicken hekka.  Oohhh…..wait.  We stopped at the chicken hekka booth for some chicken hekka for Sweetie.  Finally, we ended up at the fried ice cream, fried cheese, and fried zucchini booth.  That was pretty much my only choice and I REALLY wanted some fried food at the fair.  So, since I love fried zucchini, I ordered up a plate and we settled down for lunch.  The fried zucchini was pretty good.  Not as good as the good ol’ days of fried zucchini at Sudwerk (*sigh*), but pretty good.   We also ended up getting some hot malasadas at the end of the day.  mmmm…..fried bread dough in sugar.  Wooo!  Can’t beat that. 

We walked past all the rides and I asked Sweetie if he wanted to try anything.  I said I was game, even though we all know I can get motion sick from riding a tricycle.  But the lines were long, the kids were screaming, and we both had work to finish before we leave for our trip.  So, we just walked around and then headed out.

All in all, it was a good quick trip to the fair.

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