Gunshots and Spankin's

Got your attention with that title, did I?

It all began so calmly yesterday. We got up and got ready for church. Pete and Jill had picked out a little church in Kilauea that they remembered from the last time they were here. Singing was fine - and then the worship leader put his guitar down, turned into the pastor, and began to exposit on the "Children, obey your parents" text from Ephesians. It quickly turned into a diatribe against the lax parenting of this age, e.g. children don't respect their parents because parents are "sparing the rod" and would do well to spank much more liberally. My sister got so mad she had to walk out. The rest of us stayed until we could politely duck out after the sermon. Then we went to Walmart and had some lunch. :)

After naps, my sister found an "adventure" hike in the guidebook that seemed, well, adventurous, so we carefully read the directions and headed out. "Drive to the end of the paved road, take the dirt road for 2.5 miles" turned into some very sketchy territory, including fording two streams, driving past quizzical looking locals surrounded by a certain wafting, herbal scent, and getting passed by some very tough trucks with lots of flag and troop bumper stickers. I took a not-very-good snap of my sister's car headed across one of the streams:


When we got to the farthest we could go, we hopped out of the car, confused about where the trail was, were quickly swarmed by mosquitos, and then noticed some loud, booming sounds in the forest around us. We ran back to the cars pretty quickly, but I do wonder what they were hunting out there. To console ourselves for the lost hiking opportunity, we stopped and looked at a waterfall on the way back, but the kids were way more interested in the guinea fowl that are ubiquitous here.


(Side note: since we arrived, Lily has been obsessed with asking about whether or not the chickens get run over. We keep reassuring her that we will not hit one...and then tonight, while driving on his own, Peter got one pretty good. Oops.)

This morning we decided to head out to Poipu pretty early in the day, and it was perfect. Just right for the kids in the gentle part, and pretty good snorkeling for the grown ups when we swam out a bit. I was delighted to spot my first sea turtle of the trip - can't wait to find more of them out there.