Welcome to 2020!  We rang in the new year in classic DesJarlais style — sleeping. haha

We’ve had a great week since our last post; here are a few highlights:

• On Christmas Day, we visited Volcano National Park on the Big Island. Kind of underwhelming cause the last volcanic eruption – which lasted almost 30 years – ended more than a year ago. So no lava, no steam, no nothing. Just a barren landscape. Interesting to see the after effects, but not as exciting as boiling orange lava bubbling in a crater.
• We moved to the island of Oahu – specifically Waikiki beach. Wow, the area has really changed even in the last six years since we were last here. Manhattan-level hordes walking around at night.
• Biker and I, and dad and Shirley, visited the North Shore to see the big waves and watch surfers, while the kids hiked Diamond Head and snorkeled Hanauma Bay. Lots of traffic and lots of people – the theme of Oahu.
• Some of us visited Pearl Harbor – always a moving experience – and some of us “tried” to windsurf. The windsurfing crew came back pretty beaten up, and Biker realized a day later when the red streaks were moving up his foot and into his ankle that he had an infected injury. A trip to urgent care verified he had an infection in his lymph glands; he’s on the mend now.
• We traveled to Maui and settled into our gorgeous rental house here.
• We drove the road to Hana yesterday. Long and gorgeous drive. So lush and lots of waterfalls.

That’s it for now. Variety of pics below.

And finally, for those of you who know dad, make sure you’re sitting down before viewing this photo of him:

Told ya to sit down. 🙂

Merry Christmas from sunny Hawaii!!

Santa made a surprise visit here overnight, and in a complete role reversal, Biker and I were going to the kids’ doors begging them to get up this morning. Whatever happened to the good old days when they were bouncing on our bed at 6 a.m., itching to open presents?!?!

Last night was the highlight so far — a night dive / snorkel with manta rays. SUCH a cool experience.  The rays are so graceful and beautiful – they do loops and they glide really close to you. They’re huge – from 4-16 feet wingtip to wingtip.  An amazing experience, and something everyone should do. Divers go to the bottom and look up, while snorkelers float at the surface holding on to special buoys. The mantas swim in between the divers and snorkelers to eat the plankton that’s attracted to these big lights set in the bottom of the ocean.

How did they discover that this was a thing, you ask? Story goes that in the 1970s, the Hilton on the Big Island put out some spotlights that went into the water and they noticed the mantas visiting every night. Voila! A business – and the #2 diving attraction in the world – after shark cage diving (shudder) – was born.

We have a video but couldn’t figure out how to load it. Wouldn’t it be great if we had some technologically savvy people here at the house with us to help?! 🙂   In the meantime, this YouTube video that someone else took gives a perfect view of what we saw.

Monday we snorkeled at Hohonau Bay (known as Two-Step because of the two steps you take to launch directly into the clear waters for some of the best snorkeling on the island). Flush with beautiful yellow fish, sea turtles and other sea creatures that feed on the reef in the bay.  Really a nice experience to kick off the vacay.

The house is beautiful, complete with a great lanai and a gorgeous infinity pool.  Great spot for our home base here on the Big Island.

We’re home now, but wanted to do one last post about the final few days of our trip, which we spent visiting family and doing a bit of sightseeing.

After an amazing ride in the Catskills, we set of for Amish country. While we’ve both been through it before, neither of us had spent any time there. We were so close, so took the one-hour detour to check it out. The area is beautiful rolling hills of farmland with large farmsteads. We were surprised to see so many Amish out and about on the main roads. They travel by horse and buggy and by bicycle. We saw them working in the fields with horses pulling plows, and we saw the cutest little group of toddlers in a wagon waiting to cross the road. No pics of that one, but here are a few that I did manage to snap from the back of the bike.

On to the west side of Philadelphia to visit Biker’s mom and his sister and her family. We had a wonderful visit with all of them and felt really glad to have spent the time with Biker’s mom. While there, we took a quick trip into Philly to see the Liberty Bell and tour Independence Hall. We had a great tour guide who gave us all kinds of history. Did you know that the Liberty Bell was originally called the State House Bell because it was originally commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pennsylvania’s original constitution? It became known as the Liberty Bell and gained iconic importance when abolitionists adopted it as a symbol of their efforts to end slavery. What about the crack, you ask? Well, there are a lot of theories about it, but the bell apparently had quite a few cracks – both natural and manmade – but was ringable up until the final crack occurred in 1846 during an effort to fix one of the previous cracks.

Our final stop was the D.C. area to see our youngest. We had a great time with him, as always. After a quick stop on campus to buy Biker a Georgetown shirt, we grabbed some dinner and then headed into D.C. to wander around. We grabbed scooters and visited the Jefferson Memorial – under construction, the FDR Memorial – one of our favorites (so beautiful and serene!, and the MLK memorial. We whizzed by the Lincoln Memorial – my perennial favorite; I can’t ever see it too much! – and down the reflecting pool to the Washington Monument. Wandered up north a bit and ended up for a nightcap at the fancy and always fabulous Trump Hotel bar.

The drive home was uneventful. Just long. It’s good to be home.

The last two days have been mostly about moving south to get to Philadelphia to see Andy’s mom and his sister and her family.  We hit some really great roads along the way, including New York One, a curvy, smooth pavement road with great scenery, good visibility and no traffic. We took some great video, but it won’t load here at the hotel with this wi-fi; we’ll try to update this post later.

On this trip, we’ve seen some beautiful scenery – including noticing that the leaves are definitely changing – and we’ve made some wrong turns.  On these last two points, we title this blog post “turnt.”

While we’re a few weeks ahead of the official “leaf peepers” crowd that will descend upon New England for the fall color change, we noticed even in the week we were here that the leaves were turning before our very eyes. There are many trees that are already obviously red and orange, and many trees are turning more and more yellow every day, with lots of leaves falling, which was especially noticeable during our ride today.

Regarding wrong turns, we noticed pretty early on that we were making quite a few more u-turns due to missing a turn or making a wrong turn. Not our usual situation, but as we discussed the reasons, we realized we were “winging it” more that we usually do. Justifying our mistakes – ha!

Finally, moving to the real definition of “turnt,” (dictionary.com defines as being under the influence of alcohol or drugs) — we must discuss the hemp fields we passed today. We were driving along, minding our own business, when all of a sudden we both said, “I smell pot.”  Another u-turn to go back to see what was going on, and we came across a hemp farm We decided the local teenagers probably drive back and forth along this 1-mile stretch of road to try to get something of a high. The plants look like little Christmas trees; see pics below.

Yesterday, we drove into town to ride the Conway Scenic Railroad. But first we walked around the cute little town for a bit, eventually happening upon the White Mountain Winery tucked on a back street. We spent a happy hour there chatting with the proprietor and petting her three dogs. We wandered over to the cute and fully restored station to catch our train – specifically the charming Gertrude Emma car – for the 1 3/4-hour ride. Biker entertained himself by taking about 100 pictures.

Later that night, we took a walk around Jackson – the cute little town that has been our home base for a few days.

Today, we got on the bike and ventured northeast, thinking ‘hey, we’ll just take a quick jaunt into Maine.’ Yeah, we weren’t dressed properly. It was cold and it rained, and we had unloaded all our warm clothes and rain gear from the bike. Got down to about 52 degrees. COLD. And rainy. We turned around at one point – Biker says like little bitches – but the upside is that we saw two moose on that return trip! Our first real wildlife on this whole journey.

We rode on a couple of really great small roads on the way back to the house – and it warmed up to the mid-60s, so things were looking up. See the video below for one example of a great road – the Hurricane Mountain Road.

Yesterday and today, we wandered through the land of covered bridges, across central eastern New York, into northwestern Massachusetts, and up into Vermont.  We set our sights early on toward Mt. Greylock in the Berkshires, where we rode a great little ‘goat trail’ road to the top of the mountain. Moving north into Vermont, we rode Route 100, which is a scenic byway and mostly a great road. It was a good day, and we ended up juuuuust over the border in New Hampshire where we found some pretty great Tex Mex – I know, in New Hampshire!

This morning we ate an amazing breakfast at the Four Aces Diner in West Lebanon, NH, then began our trek to our little rented cottage in Jackson, NH, in the White Mountain National Forest. Along the way, we drove the Kancamagus Highway, perhaps the most famous route amongst motorcycle enthusiasts in all of New England. 36 miles of twisties, elevation changes, beautiful scenery, great pavement, and alongside a river. And no traffic, so that made it even better. Biker dubbed it the Cherohala of the North.

We can see the leaves on a few trees starting to change – some reds, yellows and oranges. It’s just a tiny few, but we can imagine the glory.

We saw Niagara Falls from every angle – from the right, the left, the back, the side, the front, under, over, across, above, below, lighted at night and natural during the day, and so on and so on.  We saw the mist from 1/2 mile away. We heard it from our hotel room. We felt it up close.  We saw it from a whole ‘nother country. Get the picture? It’s awesome from every angle.  Seriously, to see it and to think that that amount of water moves across it every. single. second. of. every. day. for. thousands. of. years.  Is insane.

Other than that, Niagara Falls, New York, isn’t that interesting. Go to the Canada side. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

Today, we drove across the Adirondacks. It was pretty. Not the prettiest we’ve seen but nice. Sort of like the Miss Congeniality of motorcycle rides. We had a great dinner at the Olde Bryan Inn in Saratoga Springs. Pic of Thomas Jefferson by our table; he probably at there.

We’re in Niagara Falls tonight. Nearly 2,000 miles and 8 states already … thank God we have a day off tomorrow.  We’ll spend the day wandering around and touring Niagara Falls. It will be good to have a day of rest from moving.

Saw Alex last night – met him just outside D.C. for dinner. It was great to see him; we’re so proud – he is off to a great start at Georgetown. We’re kicking ourselves for not taking a picture. But we’ll see him again at the end of the trip. Get ready for your closeup, Al. 🙂

Today, we rode from just outside of D.C. up to Niagara Falls … by way of Punxsatawney, PA.  Yep, we visited Phil! Turns out, the movie Groundhog Day does not show the actual Gobblers Knob or just how far it is from town. You cannot walk there from a bed and breakfast, Bill Murray.  But we did visit the real Gobblers Knob and we even got to see Phil!  Andy was a little sad at how small the space was for the groundhog in the stump they pull him out of on stage. Look at his sad face. 😦 .

We had lunch in Punxsy – we’re so cool we adopted the locals’ name for the town – at Punxsy Phils.  Met a very nice local farmer.  Fast forward to dinner, and we just had a nice meal at the classic Red Coach Inn – where we’re staying just 500 yards from the falls. We can hear the water crashing in our room. We’re excited for tomorrow and the rest of the trip!

So … Biker and I went on a cruise last week.  No posts during the cruise cause we were way too busy drinking, eating pizza, gambling, drinking, laughing at great comedy shows, drinking, sunning ourselves, eating ice cream (all me), drinking, and chatting up the hillbillies.  Yes, I said hillbillies.

When we walked on the cruise, we noticed the high concentration of full sleeve and neck tattoos, severe obesity, missing teeth, and just general rowdiness.  We looked at each other and said “hillbillies.”  This might make us terrible people, but whatever.  You all know us.  Are you surprised we were judgy?

Having said that, we met some great people and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.  Our stops were Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel.  We’re so over the whole shore excursion thing, so we only did one in Jamaica – we were bussed to a nearby nice resort where we could do much of the same we were doing on the ship – drink, eat, drink, sleep, drink.  We were reminded how good jerk chicken is, and I re-acquainted myself with the yummy Pineapple Delight concoction.  In Grand Cayman and Cozumel, we just got off the ship and wandered a bit.

We had a fantastic time in Hillbilly Heaven.  The clientele didn’t phase us one bit, and we’ll definitely be back to Carnival in the future.  Later, mon.

So I totally forget to tell the best part of the trip to Chichenitza — the blessing of the statue.

I really wanted a Mayan fertility statue. And no, I don’t want it to work for us. Jesus, can you imagine.

But I think the statue is cool and occasionally I like to have a culturally authentic souvenir instead of a t-shirt with a stupid saying on it (ahem, Biker). So I procured Ixchel. There’s a lot of history here, obviously, but I won’t bore you with it cause Biker says the history I provide in these blogs is, well, boring.  But if you want to know more, knock yourself out.

So I bought this thing and the salesman, all serious, goes, “now you need to have it blessed for your home and take away the energy of anyone else who has picked this up in the shop and touched it.” I’m like, um, OK. So he leads us over to a special table, sits us down, puts the precious statue in a blue tupperware bowl, and this is what happens:

Notice my irritation when he slaps me on the head with a wet branch time and again. Oh, and Biker and I are pretty sure all the mumbling he did for three straight minutes amounted to, “stupid tourists, why I gotta do this all day, you don’t appreciate my culture, I hope you leave a good tip.”

Again, you’re welcome. And don’t even think about touching my statue or I have to, like, call in a Mayan god and rub the statue with salt for three days or something crazy like that.  They gave me instructions. I’m serious.