Home from Hawaii

So we're back...finally. After waiting 6 hours in the Honolulu airport, sleeping 2 hours on a ledge in the Honolulu airport, flying 7 and a half hours from the Honolulu airport with no leg room (my legs wouldn't even fit sitting normally - let alone in any comfortable position), waiting for 2 and a half more hours in O'Hare, flying 50 minutes back to DSM, picking up the car and animals from my dad's, sleeping for 2 hours at my mom's, driving for 2 hours back to Mason City, and unpacking for 2 hours - I think I deserve a beer.

Overall the trip was fantastic. Beautiful sights, fun times, excellent food, and family - what could be better? Sleep occasionally perhaps. I'll give a run down and post some pics from each day when I get a chance.

A brief list of things we saw:

• USS Arizona Memorial
• USS Missouri
• Waikiki Beach
• meadows where scenes from Jurassic Park (all three), Indiana Jones (don't remember which one - it had tribal people chasing him across a field), & 6 Days 7 Nights were filmed
• jungle waterfalls
• surfers wiping out
• Volcanoes National Park
• 7 old lava flows
• 3 craters
• Walked over recent lava flow (110 degres still)
• red hot lava (Gene only - I got heat stroke, wimped out, and turned back)
• orchid farm (Me only - they took those of us who wimped out on a supplemental tour)
• Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Farm (Me only - they took those of us who wimped out on a supplemental tour)
• Kona coffee plantation
• snorkling in an extinct volcano crater
• Humpback whales
• Green sea turtles
• tropical rainforests
• jungles
• waves crashing on lava beaches
• black sand beaches
• small native towns
• hair pin turns on jagged cliffs
• unpaved roads
• more waves crashing on beaches
• mountain terrains
• gorgeous sights everywhere

Okay, so it wasn't that brief...