The Big Island Part 2

After lunch, we got to go to the main attraction of our tour: Volcanoes National Park. Volcanoes National Park is a huge area, and takes up a major portion of the island. They started by taking us to an overlook in the front of the park, where we could see the steam venting out of one of the main fissures in the park.

The park is up at a higher elevation, and as such is actually quite a bit cooler in temperature than the majority of the islands.  From the lookout we walked about a quarter of a mile through a fairly lush group of trees, and to the entrance of the Thurston Lava Tube. I can't really explain it as well as Wikipedia, so here's the link to that page.

A bit of a blurry shot from inside the lava tube.

 We then went to another steam vent before heading for the visitors' center. Brynn (and nearly everyone else) cheesing it up at one point or another.

Brynn cheesing it up :)

From the visitors' center, you can see the main fissure of the volcano, but of course at a much further distance. This is actually the second visitors' center, as the first one was within a 1/4 mile of where that particular fissure is now spewing smoke. Thankfully at the time it started erupting was at 2 in the morning, so there were no injuries from the new eruption.

As Brynn put it, me blowing my top

The volcano was extremely interesting, but the better views were actually later on. But first, they took us to another feature I'd never seen before, a black sand beach near Kalapana.

The beaches are formed by the volcanic dust related to the new eruptions, and are an extremely cool sight to see. As the tour guide put it, we were standing on the newest land in the world, and even younger than us.

The final stop on the tour was out to the lava flows at Kalapana. This is the area where the lava continues to flow, and has done so for years. There used to be housing out in the area, but over time a lot of them have been taken by the lava flow. However, some still remain, and are even trying to move the properties still.

Out in front of some property in danger of the lava flow.

We were lucky enough to see a couple of breaks which caused some lava to show on the surface.

Taken from about 200-300 feet away approximately (not sure)

Overall, it was an extremely interesting trip, and the fact that we were able to see some lava flow before leaving was extremely cool. The tour bus took us back to Hilo's airport, where we were able to get a snack at the one dining counter/refrigerator before flying back to Oahu. All in all, it was extremely interesting, even in spite of the poor performance at lunch. It was just so cool to see not only the black sand beaches but also the newest land being formed out there.

The Big Island Part 1

Well, it's been a while since I've written again, and I've actually been busy working (I know, it's a shocker). A little less than a month ago now, Brynn and I went on an all-day trip/tour to the Big Island of Hawaii.

The Big Island, (actually named Hawaii, as opposed to Oahu, where we are), is much more sparsely populated in comparison to Oahu, and part of the reason for this is the fact that the island is home to active volcanoes. This was the biggest reason we actually wanted to go, so that we could see the volcanoes potentially.

The tour started with a pretty early pick up. At 6:15 am, the tour group and their smaller tour bus (about 20 people at most) arrived to pick us up for our ride to the airport. It was only about a 30-40 minute ride to the airport, and we were ready to wait for our short flight.

It was a little less than an hour until our flight, and the irony was not lost on me that the wait would be longer than the flight. From Honolulu, the flight to Hilo Airport is only about 40 minutes long. We then arrived there around 9:15, and were greeted by what can only be described as a tiny airport.

We walked to the tour guide, who proceeded to inform us that we needed to get our boarding passes for our return flights before the tour would get started. After a bit of frustration, we were able to get the passes, and proceeded to wait on a similarly small bus as the rest of the group joined us.

We were a bit surprised as the bus left the airport with only about 15 people on it, despite a capacity of probably 25. The tour guide informed us that our first stop was the Big Island Candies, a business that would allow us to see them make a bunch of sweet treats. What we did not realize at the time was that the bus was dropping us off here, and leaving us there while they went to go pick up some other tourists from Maui for our tour as well. The inside of the place was realistically, only going to take up about 15 minutes of our time. However, the bus did not return until almost an hour later. Needless to say, there were quite a few concerned looks from the tour group who had been sitting there. This did, however, give me the opportunity to take a picture of the cool scenery that could be seen from the building. The land just kind of rolls slowly upward, and makes for a really cool effect.

Once the tour bus finally picked us up again, we were taken past Hilo's hotel row. It consists of about 6-10 hotels at most, but the interesting part was the fact that on the other side of the street were a number of banyan trees. Each of the trees had a small sign in front of them, notating who had planted the tree. There were quite a few famous people (Amelia Earhart, Richard Nixon), but to us the most interesting one was the tree with a sign in front of it noting James S. McCandless. We haven't been able to determine if he was related to Brynn's family, but apparently he was a fairly important figure in the early part of the 20th century on the Big Island.

We were then brought to Lili'uokalani Park, which is a Japanese garden set up right on the coastline of Hilo Bay. Not a lot to say necessarily about the place, but the pictures came out extremely nice.

Ground Level view of a small lake in the Park

The view from ground level of a small bridge

After a stop at a small farmers market, we were on our way to our next attraction, Rainbow Falls.

The park where the falls are located actually had a few different interesting things to it. With some lucky timing, we were able to get a really great shot of a small gecko hanging out there.

In addition, there was also an extremely large banyan tree in the park, which has actually rooted itself in multiple locations at this point.

After finishing up our time in the park, we then went to Volcano Country Club for our scheduled lunch. I'm not going to get into this too much, but the essentials are this: the food was not that great, the service was even worse, and was really not a very good feeling overall.

The second half of our trip will be in the next post.

The USS Arizona Memorial

One of the biggest tourist spots on Oahu remains the USS Arizona Memorial. Located out near Pearl Harbor Naval Base, the memorial is to honor the fallen soldiers from the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941. We went there a couple of weeks back, but have only really had time now to write about it.

The first thing you see when you walk in is that no bags of any kind are allowed into the visitors center area. There is a short path to an area where they keep the bags for a nominal fee. Once inside, the first thing to do was to go to the ticket line for the boat to the Arizona. The memorial itself is a small builfing which is stationed directly over the sunken Arizona. The reason it is the first stop is that they take no reservations for this boat ride, and it is entirely first come first served. We arrived shortly after 10 am, and our tickets were for a tour at 12:45 pm. We had some time, so we wandered the grounds.





They are in the process of finishing a new visitors center, and also have a gift shop to go along with 3 other paid tours that you can take. One is a tour of the USS Bowfin, a WW2 submarine. Another is of an air museum, and the third is a tour of the battleship Missouri. Also on the grounds they have displays which talk about how the attack occurred and a video discussing the results of the attack as well. In addition, there are smaller monuments listing all those who had perished on all ships that day.


 











After lunch we were finally on our boat ride to the memorial itself. They tell you on the boat that you need to not take pictures when you first get off the boat so that everyone can get off the boat quickly. Once inside, an eerie feeling comes over you as you are reminded that this is a graveyard. It is a fairly small area, but they still manage to have somewhere between 100 and 200 people in the memorial at any given time.

Inside they have a marble engraved wall which lists all of the sailors who parished that day on the Arizona. Something I was not aware of before getting there was that some of the survivors of the attacks who have since passed on have also been interred there with their shipmates. All in all it was a very somber setting, and an interesting reminder of the past.

The Hike to the Top of Diamondhead

Last week, we took a day to go hike up to the top of Diamondhead. It is about a 20-25 minute bus ride from where we are in Waikiki, and was actually a very nice hike.

We get off of the bus, and start the short hike up to the entrance to the park. The park costs $1 per person to enter if you come in on foot, or $5 per car. Since we have no car, it's kind of a moot point. But it was nice because there really was not enough parking to handle the amount of cars that were in line when we walked through.

The path starts out as a paved walkway, but very quickly becomes a rocky path that will zig-zag up the peak to move you up the side of the mountain quickly. The sign at the start of the path states it should take between an hour and an hour and a half to get up and back, which was nice to see considering we waited to start the hike until about 10:30ish and it was already getting warm out.

The view from the bottom of the hill. Nothing but switchbacks up quite a ways.










After walking up the switchbacks for probably about 10-15 minutes, we get to a set of stairs.  According to the brochure, 74 concrete steps lead to the first tunnel. The tunnel is about 225 feet, which leads to another stairway, this time of 99 steep steps. At this point, it now leads to a spiral staircase that realistically should only fit traffic going one direction, but is still used for both directions. Once you get to the top of this, it opens into a small room that finally gets you out onto the path up to the top of the peak.

The hike is worth it. All of the following are the view from the paths up to the top, which are all open air. The city pictures are of Waikiki itself.

All in all, it was an excellent hike. We were helped on the way back down the mountain by the fact that a light rain started to fall, and the breeze picked up as well. The craziest part seemed to be the amount of tourists who had no idea that it might actually involve a real hike, as they were all wearing sandals despite it being a hike. Another thing to be checked off that we have now done here in Hawaii.

Back on the Circle Island

We decided to go back on the Circle Island bus this past weekend again, but this time the goal was to go to one of the many beaches along the route. After a stop at Longs Drugs to pick up beach mats (for the oh-so-expensive price of $1.99 per), we got onto the bus headed north through Mililani again toward Haleiwa.

Now, part of the reason we had decided to go back to Haleiwa was because when we were there last time, we had not partaken of the main tourist attraction in Haleiwa. Matsumoto's Shaved Ice. Now, you may ask, shaved ice is all the same, isn't it? I mean, it's just crushed ice and flavoring. Could there actually be anything that would make Matsumoto's shaved ice better than what we could find out in Waikiki?

The answer to that question is a resounding yes. And here's why: The key to Matsumoto's Shaved Ice is the fact that you can get it with vanilla ice cream underneath it. We were both extremely skeptical when we heard about this, and probably had similar questions to the ones above. However, when we got down to the ice cream (which was after about 1/2 of the shaved ice had been eaten and another 1/4 of it had melted), mixing the two together made for an extremely smooth taste and flavor.

Now, we actually didn't start at Matsumoto's in Haleiwa. When we got into town, we noticed that there were shrimp trucks right off the side of the road. Brynn had heard from a friend that Giovanni's shrimp truck was amazing. By some small feat, one of the truck's we saw right here were Giovanni's. We got off the bus, walked over to it, and ordered.

There are only 3 things on the menu essentially, and all of them are shrimp plates. We decided to split a shrimp scampi plate, which came with 2 scoops of rice and gravy for $13. We even had a coupon for a free soda with the purchase of the plate.

This is with about 8 or 9 shrimp left out of the 12 we started with. They were gigantic shrimp (yes, definitely an oxymoron there), and were DELICIOUS. I had never been out to eat at one of the shrimp trucks that line the North Shore, and I will definitely be back there again.

After we left Haleiwa later on in the afternoon, we still had not been to the beach. As we rode the bus, we saw Waimea Bay again, but didn't like the amount of people that were there. We understood it was a holiday weekend, but we've both kind of come to the conclusion that we're not necessarily huge crowd people. As a result, we kept riding until we found a beach park called Kokololio Beach Park. Off to the side, they were setting up for a 4th of July celebration, but the beach was much quieter than any of the others we had passed to this point. I'm sure at least part of that was related to the fact that we did not arrive at this beach until around 3:00 in the afternoon, but it was still very pleasant.

We ended up staying for about an hour or so, and then catching the bus back to town. It was a long day, as we left Honolulu around 9:45 and didn't get back until almost 7 pm, but it was a very fun day as well.

The Circle Island Tour

On Saturday, we decided to take the bus on the circle island route. The bus in Hawaii is extremely useful, and runs nearly everywhere someone may want to go. Like any other bus, it nay take a little while longer to get some places than it would with a rental car, but there are some definite advantages to the bus. Starting with the low, low price of a monthly pass of $60(compared to 2.25 per trip). For senior ciizens t is even more ridiculous, as they can buy a year pass for $30 total.

The circle island route starts at Ala Moana Shopping Center, and goes up H2 through Mililani and.  On its way towards the north shore of the island and Haleiwa.

Haleiwa is an old plantation town that in recent years has become more of a small shopping area for those looking for something slightly less touristy than Waikiki. Like many of the other places on the island, there is a very quiet beach there.

After getting back on the bus, we continued the tour northeast. The bus follows Kamehameha highway the rest of the way, and we got off at the Turtle Bay resort, which is where the first half of the route ends.

The Turtle Bay resort is a semi-private resort up on Oahu's North Shore. For all intents and purposes, it is a very nice resort, but there really isn't a whole lot out there at that point besides the resort. As a result, nearly all of the guests of the resort go to the beach that is there. We had packed a picnic lunch, and found a shady spot under a tree near the beach to relax and eat.

After taking some pictures on the rocky edge of the beach, we headed back to the bus stop to wait for the next bus going to the windward side of the island. The bus was supposed to run every 30 minutes, so we figured we would not be there for long.

30 minutes went into 45 and nearly an hour passed before the bus we wanted finally arrived. In the meantime, we talked with another person waiting for the bus. An elderly lady, she was definitely a local. She told us that she took this bus just for the views off of the road, and that she thought it was one of the prettiest stretches in all the island. She was right. Around every turn seemed to be another small to mid-size beach, but missing were the tourists. Only the locals really stop at these beaches, she said, since they were so far from Honolulu proper. The most amazing thing to see was the water. Off the windward coast, these beaches were very much untouched, and not really affected by the issues that large quantities of tourists can bring. As a result, we could see at least 4 different shades of blue in the water as we passed it, and was practically clear in a lot of areas.

As the bus ride continued, the elderly lady continued to point out different spots off the side of the road, which realistically we probably would not have really noticed without her there. About halfway back to Honolulu, another local man also began to point out different landmarks along the ride. Essentially, we had a pair of tour guides from the time we left the resort, without having to pay for them. As we came back into the Honolulu area via the Pali Highway, we were shown a couple of locations that we needed to visit at some point during our stay here in Hawaii.

Overall, it was a very interesting trip, and has given us a whole lot of places that we can go visit that are a bit off the beaten path here in Hawaii.

The King Kamehameha Parade

Friday was a state holiday here in Hawaii - King Kamehameha Day. You can read all about King Kamehameha here on Wikipedia, but the long and short of why he is celebrated is this: Kamehameha was responsible for the unification of the Hawaiian Islands under one ruler. As a result, he is celebrated here with a state holiday on June 11th. For many employers here, it's a day off of work.

On the Saturday (the 12th), the City and County of Honolulu had a parade with which to help celebrate the day as well. 


This was the start of the parade. I'd like to tell you that I know what that means off the top of my head, but I don't. If I were to guess it had something to do with the celebration and the parade.









This was the float carrying the "representation of the Royal family". They build them big here, no doubt on that one. My wife posted this one on Facebook as well, and needless to say it got quite a few comments on it.

This is the Royal Hawaiian Marching Band. They actually sounded pretty good, and I was surprised honestly that there was a Royal Hawaiian Marching Band.

As a part of the parade each year, each island has a "princess", who is usually a notable citizen of some type or other. In many cases, it was a respected member of the local community, although they may not necessarily have been from the island that they represented. Each of them is on horseback, along with a standard-bearer with the information on it.

The parade ends over at the statue of King Kamehameha that is across the street from the Iolani Palace. Every year, there is a ceremony on King Kamehameha day to drape these flower leis on the statue. Apparently since they are 13+ feet long in some cases, it requires a small crane of some sort. There is also a lot of paperwork entailed with being allowed to put a lei on the statue, and during the ceremonies and parade there are members of the Royal Guard patrolling to make sure that no one is allowed to put anything on the statue that isn't authorized.






Overall, it was very interesting to see this parade, because while it was only about an hour long, there were quite a few of the main groups in Hawaii who were represented, including all branches of the military stationed here on Oahu. Not surprisingly, since the parade route went partially on Kalakaua Avenue, which is one of the main entrances to the Waikiki area, traffic for the day was a complete disaster area. All in all, a fun time though still.

Welcome to Hawaii!

Well, I know it has been a little while since I have written here. Honestly, there had not been a lot to write about until we got here to Hawaii.

I was flying standby (thanks to Brynn's grandpa for that), and as such was subject to the whims of other people not buying tickets or showing up. The hope had been at the beginning of the process that I might be able to get into first class.

Once they posted the standby list, it became clear it might be a close call whether or not I would get on the flight. As they were nearing the end of general boarding, I was still standing there, hoping. I had nearly thrown in the towel, as my name was still 5th on the standby list, but it also said only 1 seat remained.

I was saved! I am not sure entirely how it happened, but my name was called! I rushed up to the counter and collected my ticket. I was on the plane! I ended up in a middle seat, but t was of no concern as long as I was on my way.

Upon arriving, I stopped long enough to purchase a flower lei, a standard greeting for travelers, for my wife. I gave it to her when her flight arrived, and my uncle was kind enough to take us out to lunch (at Zippy's!) and drop us off at our apartment.

Finding housing that was in our price range had been no small feat, as we are going to be riding the bus here, and needed to be near a route that would take her to the hospital.

I would say that we did fairly well for ourselves.






We are within easy walking distance of Waikiki beach, and many of the tourist attractions witin Waikiki. In addition, we can take the bus to nearly anywhere we desire on the island. Life's hard, I know.

Today is King Kamehameha Day here in Hawaii, a state holiday. I am hoping to have a post up about that and the Pan-Pacific Festival going on all weekend in celebration. The parade is tomorrow and will be going down the next street over. We won't be able to see it from the apartment, but it's only a 2 block walk to see it.

I am hoping to have a few more posts up about some of the things we're seeing in the coming week.

Slow Writing and What's Next

Well, it has been a couple of weeks since I wrote here, mostly because we've been busy and not really with doing anything that has been particularly exciting. We've been to another SandGnats game, which they proceeded to lose pretty handily. I have been doing a lot of writing over at both my baseball blog and at FakeTeams, and that's been keeping me busy. We did go to Atlanta last weekend and saw the Braves play the Astros. They have a very nice stadium, and comes complete with an advertisement for Chick-Fil-A which does the Tomahawk Chop (very slowly).

So we're a little over a month until Brynn's assignment here in Savannah ends, and we started making our plans to return to California at the end of the assignment. I booked my plane ticket home for both my cousin's wedding and to start searching for a permanent job. This was when Brynn's company called.

They knew that we had been wanting to go back to California, but had one assignment that they wanted to discuss with her. Well, she discussed it with them, interviewed for it, and actually landed it. So, instead of going to California for this next assignment, we are instead headed here:

Yup, we are headed to Oahu from early June until September! There's obviously a lot of advantages to having 3 months in Hawaii, but for me, the one that is really the most important is that my wife gets to me all these family members I have been telling her exist that are over in Hawaii. Needless to say, we're very excited about this. We've been spending the better part of the last week working to get things in order so that this is somewhat stress free, hence the "not very much going-on".

Charleston, South Carolina

We spent the majority of yesterday visiting the Charleston, South Carolina area. It is about a 2-2.5 hour drive from Savannah, and is actually an older city than Savannah.

We had scheduled ourselves for a tour of the historical district, and the tour guide was extremely knowledgable.

• Probably one of the most unexpected things that we learned about Charleston is that they are built on top of an earthquake fault, which is fairly active. That was a bit of a rude surprise.
• We went to Southend Brewery for lunch, which was not too bad. They were pretty busy, as well as the entire downtown for that matter as a result of this:

These are the Blue Angels. Who we weren't aware were in town until we spoke to the tour guide to schedule the tour.  They were scheduled to be there all weekend, and their show on Saturday was scheduled for 2 PM, which was the same time as our tour.

The tour guide really worked around the fact that they were buzzing the majority of the downtown area we were touring. Some of the things we saw:

This particular house was built in the early 18th century, and is one of the oldest dwellings in town.

This building is home to one of the oldest theaters in the United States, and was the first theater built specifically for live performances in the colonies.

Savannah still has a reasonably large street in their downtown area which is entirely cobblestone. Apparently it's not particularly pleasant for anyone but the people who live on the street.

This is the city hall building in Charleston.












Overall, the tour was very interesting, and ended up showing us some unusual places in Charleston. They have alleys, which are named and are considered to be similar to street in spite of their inability to fit a car down them. There are also numerous historic houses and buildings, many of which have been there for more than 200 years. We also nearly jumped out of our skins when the Blue Angels buzzed the downtown with what felt like a sonic boom, but must have been slightly lower than Mach due to the potential to break windows with the sound.

You could also see Fort Sumter, one of the starting sites of the Civil War, out on the islands in the distance from the coast in Charleston. It was a bit surprising that the Blue Angels show only lasted for about an hour, but they were definitely busy during that time. All in all a very fun day in town.

Weekend Thoughts for 4/10/10

Baseball season is about to complete its' first full week, and already I've seen a fair amount of it. Mostly on tv of course, but we have already attended a local game.

• Here in Savannah are the Single-A affiliate of the New York Mets, the Savannah Sand Gnats. Their opening night was on Thursday, which we went to. The stadium is a much older park, probably built sometime in the 40s or 50s if I were to guess. 
• The Sand Gnats won the game, although we left during a rain delay. We had known that there was a likelihood of rain, as there was a massive thunderstorm front that would be coming through the area sometime in the late evening.
• The rain was not a huge deal, as nearly the entire seating area has a full roof covering it, and we had chosen an excellent location to sit.
• The weather here, with the exception of that set of storms on Thursday night, has been clear and nice, with temps in the high 70s and low 80s pretty much every day.
• We made a trip out yesterday to the Strawberry Festival out at Ottawa Farms in nearby Bloomingdale. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite the entertainment we thought it would be. Shortly after we got there, the transformer powering nearly everything blew out, and the one thing we had really been looking forward to (strawberry ice cream) could not be dispensed unfortunately, since the machine had no power to give ice cream. 
• You could hear in the background the Civil War re-enacters, but they didn't really appear to have a set schedule as to when they were going to be doing things, so we didn't really see any of them.

We are also looking for older photos of the Savannah area for a project we're thinking of trying out. If you know where we can get some photos that are public domain, please let us know!

Weekend Thoughts for 4/3/10

Not a whole lot has been going on around here, but there's always something to write about...

• Congrats to Dale and Sara. We went to their wedding last night out on Tybee Island, and had the most amazing meal afterward. 
• The weather out here has been extremely nice for the past week. Unseasonably warm they say, but I will take temps in the 80's every day.
• I have been tinkering with some new recipes, and found a really great recipe for calzones. So wonderful.
• We went over to Beaufort, South Carolina today. It's a little over an hour away from Savannah, and is a decent size town. Out at the edge of the city is Hunting Island, which is home to a state park with a very nice beach. 
• Nearly all of the beaches here have been very busy over the last week because of the nice weather, and the added free time of all the Savannah students on Spring Break. To the point of causing massive traffic coming back off of Tybee Island.
• Our home theater system that we received as a wedding gift has the ability to stream Netflix directly over the internet. It is a WONDERFUL feature. Well worth the monthly cost of Netflix at this point to use it for as much programming as is available.
• Baseball season starts officially on Sunday, and it feels like it has been a long time coming at this point. Go A's!

St. Patrick's Day in Savannah

As I mentioned before, St. Patrick's Day is one of the most celebrated holidays in Savannah. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but at some point a rather large Irish population took up residence in Savannah, and they've been celebrating ever since.

Some facts about the celebration:

• The parade has been run 186 times since its' inception.
• They have a grand marshal of the parade, who is selected by the St. Patrick's Day parade committee.
• A majority of the schools in the area close as there are quite a few students that are in the parade.
• Many of the more well-known Irish families will march in the parade as a group.
• The parade's planning and organization goes on for nearly the entire year through.

St. Patrick's Day coverage on the TV started with the Catholic Mass at St. John the Baptist church in downtown Savannah, which also is the starting point for the parade afterward. This year, they also had some church members who were attending from a parish in Ireland. The father giving the service was making jokes about the difficulty they were having in getting there due to inclement weather and flights.

Once the service was over, the parade started about 15 minutes later. I decided to watch it on television instead of going down there, as it would have been a huge hassle to get down there and find parking since almost all of the main streets were blocked off for the parade itself.

The channel I was watching had two commentators, both of whom have been attending the parade for quite a long time. They were actually set up with their booth right on the parade route, so that they could converse back and forth with the marchers as they went by.  The weather was overcast for most of the parade, but the rain didn't come until after the parade had long been over.

Some of the highlights of the parade itself:

• There was a man marching in his 80th parade. He is 96 years old.
• There were marching bands from all over Georgia, Florida, and even one from Virginia.
• There was a float for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who were in uniform as well.
• A majority of the Rangers stationed at Hunter Army Air Field marched, along with both their outgoing and incoming commanding officers.
• Wells Fargo had their stagecoach, along with Clydesdale horses pulling it.
• Based on the commentary, it seemed like the broadcasters had already started drinking despite the early hour.

Once the parade was over, the party pretty much continued the rest of the evening in downtown, with nearly all the main streets remaining closed until the following morning. For a lot of people in the town, it really seemed like St. Patrick's Day was the start to their weekend, despite it being on a Wednesday. It was a very interesting experience, and maybe someday I will have to go to the parade itself.

Weekend Thoughts for 3/14/2010

The city is in full-fledged St. Patrick's Day celebration mode, as the first sets of activities were yesterday. They were not kidding when they said that they celebrate St. Patrick's day like nobody else.

Some thoughts from this weekend:

• We went downtown on Saturday night with some of Brynn's co-workers, and the downtown was about as busy as I would have expected for a Saturday night. The part I was not expecting was how decked out in green everyone already was.
• We decided to walk around early Sunday afternoon downtown, and did our first exploring of River St. As you might expect, this is the road that is directly adjacent to the Savannah River. Lots of little shops and restaurants, with a feel similar to the one given off by Old Sacramento. In nearly every store front: St. Patrick's Day garb.
• Many of the fountains in the downtown area, including the large one in Forsyth Park, have already been dyed green in anticipation of Wednesday.
• The actual parade through downtown Savannah will start at 10 AM on Wednesday. As a result of this, many downtown businesses that will not profit from being open that day will be closed or on reduced hours (as is the case with Regions Bank, who will be open from 9 AM to 10 AM that day.)
• For the most part, the weather here has been pretty sunny this week. The humidity is slowly starting to pick up, and I can feel it when I walk out of the house if it's higher than I expected. A lot of it reminds me of the weather in Hawaii, but not quite as warm necessarily.
• I attended an orientation meeting with the Savannah chapter of the Red Cross so that I could start doing some volunteer work here. They need volunteers a lot more than my previous chapter in Murray did(not that Murray doesn't). I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but the Savannah chapter is responsible for an area from the Florida border south to the South Carolina border in the north east, and part of the way across the state back towards Atlanta. This area includes over 1.1 million residents. So it sounds like they're going to have a lot of good work for me to do.
• I am also waiting to hear back from Accountemps about some short-term accounting work here as well. The city of Savannah has almost 300,000 people, so they are in need of some accounting temps as well. Wish me luck on that one.
• As you probably read last week, I've started writing for a fantasy sports blog called FakeTeams. If fantasy baseball is something that interests you, check it out, as we're gearing up for the start of the season with our positional rankings.

A Week in Savannah

I actually spent most of last week hanging out with my sister who was in for a visit, but we did see some new things. Some thoughts on things we saw:

• Five Guys Burgers are really, really good. They are all over the country, although it doesn't appear that there are any ones in California. It reminds me a lot of In-n-Out burger. Not quite the same, but very good. Their fries are actually a little bit better, and supposedly they have some seasoned fries that are also good.
• Wiley's Championship BBQ was listed as the top restaurant in all of the Savannah area. And they did not disappoint. The side dishes were not the best we've had, but the BBQ was definitely worth it. We will have to go back there again.
• During this week, President Obama made a day trip to the Savannah area. The biggest news to come out of the trip locally was the fact that he made an unexpected trip to Mrs. Wilkes' Boarding Room. Which apparently didn't really bode so well with the most famous culinary resident of Savannah, Paula Deen.
• Leopold's Ice Cream is downtown, and makes excellent sundaes and shakes. One of the owner's relatives is a movie director (Stratton Leopold), and the place is well decorated with memorabilia from some of the movies he's been a part of.

The town is gearing up for St. Patrick's Day, to the point where there are quite a few businesses in the downtown area that will be open only until 10 am to allow for the parade through downtown. The town will supposedly swell from its normal size of 300,000 towards 1 million. It is apparently the largest celebration outside of Mardi Gras all year long. It will be interesting to see how it goes. So far though, Savannah has definitely been the most interesting city to be sure.

Savannah Dan's Tour

For Brynn's birthday, we scheduled ourselves to go on a tour of downtown Savannah. After some research, the tour I chose was Savannah Dan. It was a walking tour, and was extremely interesting.

Savannah Dan models himself a Southern gentleman, and definitely looks the part. It was a windy day here on Saturday, and he walked up to the meeting area wearing a long overcoat, with a seersucker white pin-striped suit underneath. And of course the Havana hat to complete the outfit.

His tour was extremely interesting, and he was extremely knowledgeable about both the history of Savannah and some of the people that helped to tell its story.

The picture to the left is of a monument in Wright Square. The monument is to honor one of Savannah's more important residents, William Washington Gordon. However, they came to find out shortly after it was built that the remains of the Indian chief who had welcomed to the colonists were actually underneath the monument. Oops.

The story actually becomes more interesting at this point. One of Gordon's relatives (a grandson I believe) had "married a Yankee", and was insulted that the Indian chief Tomochichi had been so ignored. Apparently she didn't like her in-laws, and that was one of her main reasons for complaining so vehemently about this.

As a result, she did this. This giant piece of granite is in the same square, and is from Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta. It apparently riled up her in-laws to no end. When the seller of the stone found her what she wanted the stone for, he set the price at $1, payable on Judgment Day.

Now this, is a dirt mound. Among the many movies that were filmed in Savannah was Forrest Gump. That dirt mound is where the bus bench was that Forrest sat on while telling his story. You'll notice that there's no bench. And apparently there never has been. It was only there for filming. Something else that's odd is the fact that the traffic on that street (a one-way) actually flows in the opposite direction of the way it is shown in the movie.

For those familiar, this one is a picture of the Mercer House from the book and movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I actually just finished reading it, and I highly recommend it. The book is considered a non-fiction novel, and it's interesting now that we're here to see some of the places that the author mentioned during the book. It was really interesting, as Savannah Dan used to be a policeman here, and has actually talked to the main detective from the book. You'll have to come visit and take his tour to find out what he said!

There are a ton of old churches here in Savannah as well. I chose this picture because it came out the best, but I also have pictures of half a dozen more as well. Savannah is home to the church which has been having Sunday service for the longest consecutively. The First Baptist Church in the downtown area has had Sunday service every Sunday since 1833. The most unique time was when they had Sunday service one Sunday to a group mostly made up of Confederate soldiers, and the following Sunday to a group made up mostly of Union soldiers.


The city is extremely interesting, and we are both looking forward to doing more exploring of it!

Atlanta and Savannah

We spent the majority of last week in Atlanta, staying with friends while we waited for our housing in Savannah to become available. I had never been to Atlanta, so it was definitely interesting to me to see another large city.

One of the first things we saw as we drove into town was a giant peach. It sat atop a tower, and apparently there are quite a few across the town. Peaches are a big deal in Atlanta (not really that much of a surprise), and there are apparently quite a few streets named Peachtree as well.

We did not really visit a lot of the tourist traps (like the Coke Museum), but did see quite a few things. It was interesting to see what buildings had been used for the Olympics in 1996, and the torch platform is still there to this day. Our friend Audrey gave us a brief driving tour of the city, and the downtown as well. The city definitely seems like it would be interesting to explore over time, but honestly it was just nice to hang out with friends from college.

One of the places we did visit while there was the Cyclorama. They don't allow pictures to be taken in there, but it was still a very interesting place. They are a museum to the Civil War in general, but specifically to the Battle of Atlanta in 1864. They have a lot of maps and historical pictures from the battle, but their crown jewel is the 3-story mural depicting the battle. The mural is on the rounded walls of a theatre that was built specifically to show the battle. There is seating inside the room, which rotates in time with a narrator telling the story as well.

After leaving Atlanta, we stayed for one night in a hotel on Hilton Head Island. When I looked at the map to book the hotel, it appeared to be pretty close to where we wanted to be. Whoops. It was not terribly far, but we must have passed at least half a dozen hotels with the same group along the way.

We didn't explore the Island too much, simply because we wanted to get situated at our new apartment on Friday. We're planning to head back there sometime while we are here.

After getting situated in Savannah, we did some exploring this weekend, and I'm hoping to have that written up in the next couple of days. The city is extremely interesting, and we're really enjoying it so far.

Weekend Thoughts for 2/20/2010

I had written this rather long post about the Olympics, and how unhappy in general I am with the coverage that they're getting. Apparently I was pretty angry when I wrote it, because it reads like I was. Needless to say, I decided not to post it. But I will include a few of my thoughts with my weekend thoughts today.

The Olympics

• Bob Costas annoys me. It just doesn't seem like he's a good fit for the coverage. 
• NBC, take note: Sporting events generally do not need drama added to them. So please stop trying to create it in some of these events. 
• Curling is surprisingly entertaining. Since I now understand some of the strategy and rules a little better, it actually looks like a pretty difficult sport to play.
• Short-track speed skating looks like the most dangerous and also most entertaining sport that is in the Olympics. 
• The U.S. and Canada are quite a bit better at women's hockey than everyone else. A LOT better.
• I'm not thrilled with the tape delay on things that could be live. Apparently there's not a lot of people who are. Especially the people in Seattle who could go to an event in Vancouver, and potentially be home in time to watch it on television.
• Cris Collinsworth should stick to reporting on football. Or not do that. Either would be fine with me.

Murray State

• We went to the Bracketbuster game today for Murray State. For those that aren't familiar, essentially ESPN takes a whole bunch of the better mid-level Divison 1 college basketball teams, and pits them against each other. A majority of these teams will not play in the March tournament, but in many cases it can give some really good games. 
• The game was televised on ESPNU, and as a result had an 11 AM start time, which was unusually early for a Saturday. 
• The arena wasn't sold out, but it was easily the biggest crowd of the season. The place was electric, and it was a very unique feeling.
• Murray State won their game, and extended their winning streak to 17 so far. They are going to be the favorite to win their conference's automatic bid into the March tourney.

We leave Murray on Monday, and have enjoyed parts of our time here. The weather today decided to show us what it could be like, with 66 degree weather most of the day. Stupid winter.

On another note, I've mentioned before that I have been writing another blog about baseball to help fill my time. The blog is doing well, as I've been getting between 20 and 30 visitors a day. Something good has come of this as well. I will also be writing for a fantasy baseball blog called FakeTeams. It's a member of the SportsBlog Nation, which is a group of blogs that follows nearly all major teams and leagues, both professional and college. It's not a paid job, but they are pretty well-read, and the exposure will definitely be a good thing for the blog as well. I'm looking forward to it, and we're both really excited about it. It should help to fill some more of my time too :)

Weekend Thoughts for 2/7/10

The Super Bowl was a really good game last night, and congrats to the Saints for winning. Undoubtedly, the party down in the Big Easy will continue for a few days, running into Mardi Gras next week potentially.

Some thoughts from this weekend:

• Commercials during the Super Bowl weren't bad, but it seemed to me like every segment had a Bud commercial. Probably would have been better off for everyone if they would invest that money in improving the taste of their beer as opposed to advertising it. 
• The Volkswagen commercial with Stevie Wonder was pretty funny too.
• It's supposed to snow here in Murray again this week, and I'm a bit over it. It doesn't snow a lot, but it does seem to bring a large portion of the city to a stand-still in spite of this fact.
• Anytime there is going to be a fair amount of snow, everyone here in town (and apparently all over the South as well) stocks up on three things: Bread, milk, and eggs. I'm not entirely sure where these three items came from on this topic, as I am used to earthquake preparedness, which is water and canned goods.

We have locked in our next assignment: Savannah, GA. It's a really good size city (over 100K in population), and has quite a bit of history to it as well. Savannah is located right on the Atlantic coast of Georgia, with a lot of other destinations nearby:

• Atlanta - 4 hours
• Jacksonville, FL - 2 hours
• Charleston, SC - 4 hours
• Charlotte, NC - 4 hours
• Orlando, FL - 4 hours

The city really should be interesting, as we are both really big history buffs. And Paula Deen is there too! More excellent food :) We will be there from the first week of March until late June (hopefully anyway!)

Weekend Thoughts - 1/31/2010

Well, as many of you probably saw on the news, the Southeast was hit with a pretty good size snowstorm on Friday. Initially expected to hit overnight between Thursday and Friday, it didn't really start snowing until mid-day Friday. And then it just kept on snowing. When we woke up on Saturday morning, it had gotten to somewhere between 8-10" of snow.

We also had some friends visit over the weekend, getting into town before the snowstorm hit. All in all, a very fun weekend. You've got Brynn and Audrey feeding the giant cow outside of Sirloin Stockade here. (It wasn't quite as hungry as you would think a cow that size would be.)

The state of Kentucky and all the local groups did very well with clearing the roads of snow, so we actually took them around a bit of western Kentucky and southern Illinois. Right across the border from Paducah, KY is Metropolis, IL. The town of Metropolis is best known for being the home of Superman. So they have gone for it, with a Superman museum and a statue in one of the town's squares.

Strangely, this statue (which is about 25 feet tall), is not even the tallest statue in this town. There is a giant statue (probably about 50-55 feet tall) in front of a grocery store of a giant grocery clerk. It was a bit strange to see actually.

Metropolis is also home to a riverboat casino (Harrah's), which was fairly standard of a casino. (Also got $20 of our money as well, so definitely a standard casino).

We also made our way back to Paris, TN, in search of their Eiffel Tower that we had heard about. After a bit of searching (and following the signs), we did find the Tower in a park in the center of town. It was not nearly tall enough to be seen from anywhere else in town, which wasn't really a surprise. The town is hilly, and the park was in one of the small valleys of the town.

All in all, a very fun weekend for everybody, in spite of the snow.