December 2018
Here’s what the past month has looked like for us:
November 26-29 | Curtis works 12+ hours every day.
November 29 | Curtis comes home from work, stays up all night to adjust to night schedule.
November 30-December 13 | Curtis works every single night, 14+ hour shifts, sometimes not able to come home.
December 13 | Curtis finally comes home, tells me he has one week of leave. After considering whether we should take a day to be lazy or just leave right away for vacation, we go ahead and book tickets for 5am the next morning.
December 14 | 3am wake up call to fly to the Big Island! Fly into Kona, drive South to visit a National Historic Park and South Point, drive to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and obtain backcountry permits, hike 7 miles to Red Hill cabin.
December 15 | Hike 12ish miles up to the Mauna Loa cabin at above 13,000 ft of elevation.
December 16 | Hike back to Red Hill cabin (11 miles for me, 16 for Curtis — full story coming later).
December 17 | Hike 7 miles back to our car, find new campsite in HI Volcanoes National Park, restock on supplies in Hilo.
December 18 | Hike Mauna Kea — 12 miles, up to our highest elevation yet!
December 19 | Explore HI Volcanoes National Park, drive all around the island counter-clockwise back to Kona, visit the other National Historic Sites on the island, fly home at 10:30pm.
December 20 | Curtis returns to work at 7am.
Are we crazy? Maybe just a little, but we had been anticipating this trip for over a year and are so thankful we took it. It was one of those trips that maybe caused us some pain and loss of sleep, but we’ll forever look back on it and remember how much we accomplished and how perfectly everything worked out. Now we’re on a semi-Christmas break (Curtis still has to work some days, but gets a few off as well) so we have some time to decompress and slowly catch up on neglected things…like this blog. Posts about our trip coming soon, as well as our 2018 year in review!
Merry Christmas everyone!
