Six Months

It's been six months since we "moved" to Hawaii. I tried so hard to let it be known that we LIVED here, dammit, and were not just tourists. Why that was important to me, I still can't exactly figure out. What makes it even worse when I think about it is the fact that the Hawaiians actually LIKE the tourists. They visit, and then go home. What they don't like are people like us that move here, and worse yet, get one of the precious, hard to come by, J.O.B.S's.

Now after living here in Hawaii all this time I've begun to question the fact if I even consider myself living here anymore. Obviously I live here and have the rent and utility bills to prove it, but I am constantly looking for a new waterfall to uncover or a new mountain to drag my family up. Even if it's just a cell phone, I always have a camera on me, and almost always come home with at least one picture.....even if it is just of the food I picked up at the 7-11. I listen with HUGE ears wide-open any and every time I speak with a local, hoping to learn a little bit more about their culture, the names of the flowers and how they really feel about the United States.

I'm still learning these things, but in the process, have learned something about myself.

I AM A TOURIST.

A BIG FAT APPRECIATIVE ONE.

Lake McConaughy – We L.o.v.e. You

When deciding to leave Texas the only place we really wanted to go was the beach. We couldn’t really get to a coast so when we remembered about Lake McCanaughy up in Nebraska, we couldn’t escape the heat fast enough! We’d been to Lake McCanaughy in July of 2007 and loved it so much we went again in June of 2008. We took a two lane highway almost the entire route and until I recognized a spot that I had once gotten pulled over for speeding, I thought we had found a new road for us. Then I had another déjà vu when we were playing in a park in Scott City, KS……It took me a while, but I recognized it as a park we had played in before! There are pictures from this park in a video I made years ago after the Unschooling Conference in New Mexico. There’s a picture of Jewel in the video hanging upside down right at a part where the singer says “You’re still free”. This picture of Jake also reminds me that they’re still free.

We ate at the Pizza Hut across the street, which is no easy task for vegetarian Jonas who doesn’t even want to step foot in a restaurant anymore, and doesn’t like Pizza. He gave in, had cheesy breadsticks and we all enjoyed the break from almost non stop driving. By the next morning we were terrorizing the beach!

Jewel wore her wetsuit so she would be warm in the water and Jonas wore his so he wouldn’t get a tan.

On windy days they’d try out boogie boarding, again Jonas is covered so he does.not.get.a.tan.

Other days they’d try their sand surfing skillz.

Then back to boogie boarding, mixed in with some sand castle building.

And no matter where we are, there’s always toad catching.

One day we went to the Kingsley Dam Hydro Plant, where we learned more about the history of the lake………

And what a big mouth Jacob has!

This first week here at the lake was like paradise. We were completely alone, and reconnecting as a family again. No outside interferences, be them good or bad, just back to us. No cares in the world for the time being. We did a lot of relaxing, both in and out of the water.

Some of it included cocktails.

Then that kid and their freedom thing pops up again………..

Fossil Point

Among the many trails surrounding us here in Castle Country, one is called Fossil Point, but basically it didn't matter what the road led to, for us it's just an excuse to go for a drive. We love going for drives. It's what we do. Whether it's a drive in the country, thru the mountains, along the oceans, amongst canyon walls, or as is the case lately, transporting back to the Jurassic Era, a good drive is our drug....and Utah's giving us our fix.

The drive to Fossil Point started out heading south from Green River, into the San Rafael desert past miles and miles of gray shale until the more colorful and older geological layers were gradually being exposed.


We have now officially entered the badlands of the Jurassic (and I know this because my handy dandy brochure from the KOA office told me so). But also because we could actually envision the dinosaurs roaming this land.

I could see a brontosaurus drinking from this reservoir.


DinoExpert Jake, however, says it was a velociraptor I saw, and he had the tracks to prove it.


Right after the reservoir is a smaller, primitive dirt road that leads to Fossil Point and the resting ground of many dinosaur bones and fossils. My instructions were to drive 1.2 miles and "park on the large flat area" and "Fossil Point is the rocky outcropping 116 feet above and to the East".


One: I do not know how to set the tripometer in my car, with all it's fancy gadgets.
Two: There are at least half a dozen separate rocky outcroppings.
Three: I need more instructions.

One large flat area: check.


Next my instructions say, "just start exploring the boulders for bones" and "there are some large vertebrae and other bones embedded in some rocks right at ground level." Go ahead, Jake...just start exploring!

No, really, it's nothing like finding a needle in a haystack..trust me.

I doubt this is anything, but it's the closest we came to even trying to force an imaginary fossil. It looks like it could be vertebrae. no?

Oh well, we pretty much gave up before we even started because Joey and the kids kept finding cool rocks, and I was fixating on these itty bitty little flowers that popped up sporadically. This little pink plant was about one inch big, and looked like it was coated in sugar crystals.


This little two inch tall one was another one of my favorites.

They were so incredibly tiny!

After a bit I wandered over to a different rocky outcropping, the tallest one near where we parked, and decided it was Fossil Point and if I climbed all the way to the top I would be rewarded with "enormous casts and fossil bones once belonging to a Brontosaurus, among others."

All I saw from up top was a mini hotwheel car and some toothpicks rock hunting. It was a good workout hiking up that sandy mountain, though!

When we were ready to go we decided to keep going a little further South, and just see what we find.

We found the land got redder, and that we could go on for days...but with no GPS on us, or cell phone reception anymore, topped with the fact that no one knew where we were, we didn't.


We went back to Horse Bench reservoir to climb around it's many boulders and take in different views of the reservoir. I love this body of water, not because it's red, but because it's not even water!

It's solid mud! Trippy, huh? All those ripples in it...drying mud.

A little rock collecting, boulder hiking, lizard chasing, sight seeing, and fly practicing.

It's what Jake does.

Appreciating her life and all the pretty things in it...

That's what Jewel does.

What do you do?