Naked Guy and more Hiking

Well Mason is out of the house now. It's a little weird to be honest. We just so used to having him around and always doing stuff with us!

We wore him out a bit the day he had his flight. His flight was taking off at 7pm so we decided to have one last adventure. Mason, Houston, Travis (ha! sounds like the Brothers) and I snorkeled for about 45 minutes to an hour from Ke'e beach to get to Hanakapi'ai beach. On our way we were able to see some reef, lots of beautiful scenery from the mountain, caves, turtles and...a butt naked man. Yeah. James said we would get used to seeing naked people while we are here. We got tired at one point from the swim so we decided to pull over onto the beach. Well, there was this butt naked dude standing facing the mountain with his hands in the air....probably worshipping some mountain god or something. Once we saw him, the whole pulling over idea sounded more like an awkward situation than a good idea....so we kept snorkeling on along to another section of the beach. We finally pull over and do a bit of looking around and Naked Guy come walking right towards us.  Unfortunately each of us got a good look at EVERYTHING as he walked past us. We didn't realize it, but our destination was super close so we decided to walk the beach instead of snorkel the rest of the way. We figured we would run into Naked Man again but we did not expect to see him laying on his back in the sand and doing kicking motions with his legs. It looked like he was riding a bicycle while laying down. Seriously? SO AWKWARD, but funny too.  We just avoided eye contact and made our way to Hanakapi'ai. We rested a bit on some warm rocks before we started the two mile hike back....barefoot. Yep...no shoes. On our way, tourists graced us with funny looks as well as "Way to go" or "You guys are tough." I thought it was a perfect last day for Mason. Naked Guy and all. :-)

Before we set out! 

This is where we saw Naked Guy. Sorry, no pictures of him! ;-)

On our barefoot hike back.

To cope with missing Mason, we had a cookout on the beach with some of James family and family friends, We made hot dogs and campfire bananas. The bananas were so awesome! We just cut the banana in half, loaded it with goodies (chocolate chips, marshmallows, peanut butter, cinnamon, and/or honey), wrapped it in foil and stuck it in the coals. DELISH. One of the family friends plays the banjo so we were entertained by his lovely music and singing while being warmed by the fire and starring at the stars. I thought being at the blueberry farm at night was the best place for the stars but they turn it up a notch over here. You can easily see the Milky Way pretty much every night and from probably anywhere on the island. It really makes you think about the vastness of God and get all deep thinking and stuff. :-) Its good to do that sometimes...to realize our creator is way bigger than us and our little problems. He's got it under control.

Friday night Houston and I went away for a couple of days to stay in a cabin in the mountains on the South side. Originally it was supposed to be a group of us, but people bailed and we weren't allowed to get our money back so Houston and I went alone. It was nice to have our own house for a bit. Our house has just been so busy for the past month and a half! It's always Houston, James, Nevin and I but we have had Mason there for a month and also James' cousin there for three weeks (most of the time overlapping with Mason). That's quite a bit of people in one house! Anyways, Houston and I stayed in some crappy little cabin but it was lots of fun. We had no service, no internet, no TV so we played cards and read and did a lot of hiking. We hiked the Canyon Trail to Waipo'o Falls. This was easily one my favorite hikes thus far. The views of the canyon were UNREAL! Pictures and video do nothing compared to actually being there. There was also a small waterfall and anther large one at the end of our hike. We stayed at the end of the trail to eat a snack while enjoying the view and sounds of mountain goats and waterfalls for about an hour. It was so amazing!

Aloha,
The Brothers