Aloha and Mahalo Mom and Dad! - Completed 11/18! - Page 3 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Once again, the day dawned and the sun rose majestically over the Pacific (on the other side of the island, but still....). I, again, was up about 2 hours prior to sunrise!!! Still on Vegas time, I got up at 4:42. No one else was up yet, and Mom and Dad had left the other bedroom door open, so I couldn’t do anything in the living room. As I was fumbling around looking for the switch to turn on the porch light, I saw the light in our bedroom come on, telling me that DH was up and I could go back in there to watch TV (and write in my journal for this TR).
Everyone was still asleep, so I decided to shower around 6. The family got up while I was cleaning up. DS’ fever was negligible – not gone, but lower than 100. He had very little cough, but there was a little, so we gave him cough syrup and his other meds. We ate yogurt and fruit for breakfast. The kids tried papaya and apple-bananas. The papaya was normal and kids weren’t thrilled. Apple-banana taste like a just barely yellow regular banana, so we weren’t really all that thrilled so far about the tropical fruit. Everyone else got ready and all of us minus my dad walked down to a blow hole at the end of the 15th (cheating, since we’re not supposed to go on the golf course). I took a neat picture of weed growing in the middle of dark lava rock. On the way, we saw what Mom called banana spider (black and yellow), but we’ve since heard it is a Cane spider. I have a picture of it, but I have to edit it before I can add it to the album.
When we returned from our walk, it was about 8:30 and we got ready to go hit some unexciting stuff, but some was fun. We went to a farmer’s market and ended up buying a cool hair thing for Sam that has beaded elastic joined to combs. It can hold the hair up in many ways and I already like the different ways we’ve done her hair. We also bought: guava, starfruit, dragon fruit, mango, passion fruit/lilikoi, rambutan, Maui gold pineapple, oranges (Mom said I would be blown away when we finally taste the oranges, but even she was disappointed in them), and a custard fruit whose name we cannot remember. While we looked around and Mom purchased tropical flowers for an arrangement (she’s a florist), I noticed a gecko on a nearby table, climbing the side of a small box fan. I reached slowly over to him and put my finger under his chin. He climbed up my arm from there before jumping back on the table. And thus was born The Gecko Whisperer. I must admit that I was unable to repeat this amazing feat on the numerous other occasions I happened upon geckos. But, let me tell you, their feet are the weirdest feeling! They have to padded balls for toes and they were so soft and, well, padded as he clambored up my arm. I now geckos, but I was unable to find any cute gecko stuff to bring home.
After the farmer’s market, we stopped at King Kamehameha Hotel to get tickets to the lu’au Friday night (Island Breeze Lu’au) and ran across the street to Del Sol, so that Mom could get her free tote bag ( that she ended up giving me!). Since she’s never been there, she thought it was neat, but we didn’t spend a lot of time there. We had planned to go back on Friday before the lu’au, but Mom wasn’t feeling well and we ended up skipping it. It was fun, though, to point out that Sam was wearing Del Sol nail polish. I think Mom liked the claw clips for her hair (she wears a lot of them) but she wondered how you could figure out what color they were when you get ready inside?
We got on our way again, planning to stop (again!) at Wal-Mart and Safeway. We needed golf stuff for Dad and DH (Wednesday – Day 4) and floaties and goggles for the kids. At the grocery store, we stocked up on provisions for the week, including 2 dinners that we will make (vs. going out to eat).
We had subs for lunch and ate on the lanai. Mom started feeding the birds with bread crumbs and lured some different types over, so I got some good pictures of them. There are lots of large mushrooms sprouting in the grass and I took a picture of some that are in the rough on the 15th. After lunch, we tried some fruit. DD liked passion fruit (though it doesn’t look good) and didn’t care for guava. DS only licked the passion fruit once and was done. DH cut up half the pineapple, which we’ve snacked on this afternoon. Since it’s Maui Gold, it’s not as acidic, but Mom and DH prefer “regular” pineapple. I didn’t miss the sore tongue I get from regular pineapple. We also tried the rambutan (the kids tried, and liked, it earlier. It’s like a hard to eat grape, a little thready, though, since some was stuck in my teeth). I didn’t think until after to take pictures of the fruit and the kids trying them – I’m still new to taking photos in anticipation of a TR.
I took the kids to the pool with Mom and read a bit. When we returned, I found DH asleep and Dad watching the 7th game of the ALCS, Sox vs. Rays, so we played Uno with the kids.
This was my assigned night for dinner, so I made Baked Ziti (a cheesy version). Dinner got rave reviews from the parental units. Mom, though, had imbibed in a bit of wine (yeah, just “a bit”, uhuh). After dinner, we all went down to the pool, which we had to ourselves. We splashed around with everyone and let DS swim without his wings, while I laughed at how unrestrained my mother was being. After returning, the kids had a bath, we all had ice cream and we settled down. Still on Vegas time, we ended up in bed a little before 9:00. This early bedtime will be theme throughout the trip.
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Sorry the little one was not feeling well...it is hard enough traveling with kids but when they are sick it is so much harder. Glad you were able to get him some medication and that he started to feel a little better...
Sounds like everyone is having a great time...loved the Gecko story...(think what would have happened if he made it into the fan, you propbably are a Gecko lifesaver )
Your dinner night sounded delicious, glad it went over with rave reviews...looking forward to hearing more.
Guess what? The new upgrades allow me to post pictures!!! So now, I get to show you as I tell the story....I'm so excited! Now, on to Day 3...
This morning, I got up about 5:45 because I saw some light in the main area – indicating others were up. Found DD (!) and Dad up, with Mom joining us shortly. DH soon followed, with DS getting up around 6:15. DS’ fever is down, but his cough is a little worse (meaning, he’s coughing up junk, so the coughs are harder – it’s a good sign it’s progressing though). I’m hopeful that we’ll kick this before the end of the trip. He’s also being a bit of a stinker today. I think we’re not being active enough for him. We had plans to hang out with my aunt and uncle today (who happened to be visiting from Illinois).
Aunt and Uncle arrived and got chatty, delaying our start (until I finally spoke up – they’re just not used to having young kids around! We needed to get where we were going by lunchtime so they could eat). We left at 10:30 to head to South Point and Black Sand Beach. We didn’t find out until we were on our way that it would take for-freaking-ever to drive there! Seriously, it's about and hour and 1/2 away and we did not know that! We stopped at the Coffee Shack for sandwiches, since Mom and Dad rave about the sandwiches from this place. No parking was available, so we parked with the highway immediately on our left and a cliff immediately on our right. I stayed in car with DS, who was sleeping (again, anything to help him get healthy). DH got reprimanded by a server for using his cell phone to ask what I wanted to eat, causing Mom to complain to the person who rang them up (“We’ve been stopping here for sandwiches for 17 years and I’ve never encountered anyone that rude before” Go, Mom!). Sandwiches in hand (DH and I split a roast beef, kids split PB&J), we got on our way again with Mom in a car with Aunt and Uncle. Dad played 20 questions with the kids, which was interesting (and I do mean “interesting” – my dad comes up with the weirdest stuff and DS kept guessing jellyfish and then using that as his answer when it was his turn!).
We got to Black Sand Beach and ate lunch. There is something so magical about eating at a picnic table with this sort of view…
The kids really enjoyed this place, owing, in no small part, to this:
So, being so excited about this - I quickly tossed the kids into the picture....
And then, we met up with DH and Dad, where we saw this:
(There're 5 there, if you're keeping count. So total - we saw 6 (!) green sea turtles!)
Since I’m including pictures, I’ll split this into 2 posts. So, I’ll leave this one with one final picture.
And what do we do to get the black sand off our feet before getting back in the car? Aw, it’s ok…it’s a rental!
Next up: The southernmost point in the whole United States!
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We left Black Sand Beach and retraced our steps to the turnoff for South Point, which is narrow and bumpy and, in some places, one lane (but hey, it’s a rental!). I find this road interesting, considering it’s a major destination on the island. South Point is the southernmost point of anywhere in the US (as opposed to Key West, which is the contiguous US). When we arrived, we were at a cliff with riggings where, once upon a time, ships would be lowered into the water for fishing and such.
We also saw some cliff diving tourists. If you look at this picture, you’ll notice that there are two female heads bobbing in the water (lower right), waiting for the guys. It took the guys awhile to gather up the courage to jump! Girl Power!
We then traveled a little further, to the actual southernmost point, scrambling over lava and enjoying the crashing waves.
We took lots of pictures of crashing waves.
I have to take a break to explain something. There is something on the islands called Hawaiian Graffiti, where people leave messages, names or pictures in white rocks or coral on the dark lava. Up until recently, it was the only “graffiti” you could find (though I did notice some white paint on other roads that really made me angry ). So, this is Mom and DD’s attempt at graffiti. I wonder if it's still there:
At this point, we’d been wandering around the rocks, enjoying the crashing waves (am I obsessing?) and I had the camera in my charge. When DH caught up with us (he stopped to do his own graffiti of the kids’ names), he took the camera, I kept our zoom lens in my pocket and I scampered out to Mom and the kids. I was very excited about finding a pretty shell, so I hurried out to where Mom was standing to show everyone. Suddenly, my feet were up and out in front of me as I did a “butt-plant”! Since Mom was out there, I didn't even think about the wetter rocks being slippery. But the lens was safe, since I turned my body to the other side to ensure this! I was ok, just ended up having a bit of a headache (wait, didn't I land on my bottom? Why'd my head hurt?), and I’m disappointed that DH wasn’t quick enough to get it on camera – then I could have laughed over it.
In the end, DD remarked, “This is the coolest place I’ve ever been to!” And that makes it all worth it, really. Going back out down the road, I took some pictures:
It's so windy at South Point that the trees grow sideways!
Nice and clean (and working!) wind farm....
Old and busted wind farm (notice the armless one on the right)!
Our view, when we reached the main road ready to turn left into Kona. I love that there are road signs for a volcano!
The drive back was uneventful, if a bit repetitive. More 20 questions. We tried to stop at a macadamia nut farm, but they close early and we didn't know that. We returned to the condo to figure out what to do for dinner. Aunt and Uncle wanted to take Mom and Dad to dinner (Aunt felt bad about it, but I was so fine with that – they got a nice dinner where the kids probably wouldn’t have done so well), so we took the kids out for pizza (yeah, I know, Pizza Hut in Hawaii. And it wasn’t that good). At their dinner, Mom had opakapaka (pronounced Oh Pahka Pahka), which she told me many many times the next day, for some reason. Since she felt it was worth mentioning that much, I figured it deserved a mention in the TR! Anyway, when we got back, DH took the kids swimming and I watched Dancing with the Stars (Mom and Dad joined me when they got back).
Up next: Wanna see a tropical flower? Or two? Or 20?
WDW - August 1997 Off Property
WDW - January 2005 AKL
WDW - May 2006 Pop Century
WDW- november-dec 2007 pop century
WDW- dec/jan 2009/2010 pop century
WDW- oct/nov 2012 art of animation
WDW- sept 2013 port Orleans riverside
WDW- july 2015 beach club
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I'm all caught up. The flight out sounds like it was a bit of a nightmare, but what beautiful scenery once you got there. You know, it's so funny to hear you talk about Wal-Mart and Safeway. Because Hawaii is so far from the American mainland, I always think of it as another country, rather than one of the states, so to hear about familiar stores like that out there is quite a wake-up call for me!
I have too many pictures to fit into my narrative of the day, so these first few posts of Day 4 will be exclusively photos of the amazing (and somewhat strange) foliage found in HI. I will finish up with a tale of our day after the photos.
These photos were taken outside of Tex's in Honokaa, where we purchased malasadas (big, square donuts). It's a good snack at the halfway point from Kona to Hilo (a long drive). If I know what it is, I'll label the photo:
Jack Fruit (related to Breadfruit)
This is on a palm tree.
Hibiscus - and one of my favorite flower photos of the trip.
Angel Trumpet Tree (close up) - This tree is in everyone's front yard and it is a beautiful tree, dripping with these blossoms!
Plumeria - the main flower in leis, very fragrant. Those who know me on Facebook - doesn't this look like the plumeria offered on Lil Green Patch?
These were all taken at the Hawaii Botanical Gardens, while it was raining quite steadily. No wonder the tropical flowers do so well there!
Rattlesnake Heliconia (there are many many types of heliconia - the "regular" heliconia is commonly found in tropical arrangements, but I didn't get a picture of it)
Lobsterclaw Heliconia
I think this one was Persian Rose (or something similar) but I can't find a resource online to support that memory.