I’m finally getting back to normal life after my quick Boston trip. I feel like I didn’t see much of Boston. The subways were great and easy to get around with, but the downside is you don’t get to see much of the city, unlike San Francisco, which you could see much of the city riding on a Muni bus.

I love sushi, but my wife doesn’t, so I seldom get to have it. So of course we went to seek out sushi for our first Boston meal. We stayed just a few block from Chinatown, so oddly enough, we found a great sushi place in Chinatown via Yelp. I don’t have much sushi experience, but this was by far the best I’ve ever had. So if you’re ever in Boston, check out Avana Sushi. It’s just a hole in the wall, but it was great.

Thursday night we took the train to Gillette Stadium for the Patriots game. The train was kind of a joke. It didn’t leave early enough for you to see the start of the game. The train was massive. I think it was 22 or so cars long of double-decking seating. That massive amount of people caused a huge bottle neck getting into the stadium. We didn’t get to our seats until halfway through the first quarter and missed the first two scores. Gillette Stadium was a cool experience, but I preferred the character and traditions at Candlestick park over Gillette Stadium.

On Friday we headed out for some coffee and breakfast, so we stopped in at the Boston Brewin Coffee Co. It was a great little coffee shop. The barista recommended that we ride the ducks. I’ve rode ducks in a few other cities. It’s a pretty touristy thing to do, but we thought it would be a good way to see a big chunk of the city, so that’s what we did.

Then Saturday we were back in Minneapolis for the rest of the weekend. It was another fun trip to see another NFL stadium.

So this week I’m going to be in Boston for a few days. My buddy and I are going to the Patriots game this Thursday. Neither of us are fans of either team, but we like checking out other teams stadiums and traditions. Two years ago we went to San Francisco to check out Candlestick Park. I really liked the city, but it was definitely a different world from what I am use to. In a perfect world, it would be cool to see a game at all the NFL stadiums, but I know that’s not feasible. I’ve seen games in three different NFL stadiums so far, and all three, Mile High Stadium, The Metrodome, and Candlestick park, no longer exist. I hope we keep going. There are a lot of cities and stadiums that I would love to check out.

My buddy is a big fan of Boston, I’ve never been. We have a free day on Friday. I have no idea what we will be doing, or should be doing. Any ideas?

It should be a good time, and Go JETS!!!

I’m finally home from vacation. Branson is pretty much the same as it was last time we went. It’s not my favorite place, but my Mom likes it, and she likes to have the whole family there. Overall I had a good time.

We went on some scary ass roller coasters at Silver Dollar City, took a cave tour at Silver Dollar City, fed tigers at the tiger sanctuary, went zip lining, rolled down a hill in a “hamster ball”, rode many go carts and bumper boats, went to a few shows, and ate way too much food.

Then there are the things that annoy me about Branson.

Branson is just too conservative, Christian, and country for me. I always feel out of place there. We went to a few shows, and they were good, but every one of them had their “God” moment. It was kind of annoying. For some reason the Christians there feel defensive, and they think Branson is the only place that they can be proud. I hate religion being pushed on me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for anybody practicing their religion. I will defend your right to practice your religion to my death, but don’t push it on me. The religious sections of the shows just made me leaving with a bad taste in my mouth.

They also love their veterans in Branson. There is nothing wrong with that, but Branson goes overboard with it. I appreciate everything veterans have done, I lost an uncle in Vietnam, and my Dad is a veteran, but sucking their dicks on every corner is a little much. This may sound insensitive, but military people are just doing the job they signed up for. Sure their job is dangerous, but many other professions are also dangerous, and just as important. Veterans get a lot a praise for doing their job, and while they deserve it, they often get too much praise in my opinion, and hearing about how great veterans are multiple times a day, every day, really gets old.

I’m glad to be home. A week is a long time to be gone. Now it’s time for me to catch up on my internet now that I got one that works at a reasonable speed.

So we have been lucky enough to have been able to take a vacation every year for the past ten years. I have been trying to think of a place to go this year, but not really sure where. The Broncos play in Green Bay next season, so we might try and get tickets, and go on a road trip to Green Bay, and then down to Ohio and visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I have always wanted to see Lambeau Field because of all the history there. If they play in December I might not want to go though. That would be a lot of driving on crappy roads.

I don’t know if that would count as our vacation though. I kind of want to go some place this summer. One of my Twitter friends mentioned that she only needs to visit ten states to have visited them all. So I though I would check to see what states I haven’t visited yet.

visited 32 states (64%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

I still have 18 more to go. Maybe it’s time to visit the New England states, or maybe Vegas and the Grand Canyon? Something tells me no vacation is ever going to match Hawaii though.

For those of you sick of my vacation posts, this is the last one.  Day eight was our last full day in Hawaii. 

We started it off by taking a helicopter ride.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from the ride.  I’m not a big fan of flying, but surprisingly it wasn’t really scary at all.  The take off and landings in planes is what I really hate.  In a helicopter, take offs and landings are nice and smooth.  It was only a 50 minute ride, but we got some nice views of a couple waterfalls, and got an even closer look Mount Kilauea.  We flew right around the active volcano.  We then went on a search for some open lava.  The flows are always changing, and mostly underground when we were there.  We did see a couple open windows where you could see the lava flowing.  It was pretty damn cool to see.

That afternoon we went to Mauna Kea.  Mauna Kea is the highest point in Hawaii, and one of the best spots in the word to observe space, because it’s above 40% of Earth’s atmosphere, and 90% of the water vapor.  We met our tour at the base.  It was nice to take the tour up because the ride was a little hairy.  About half way up we passed through the clouds.  We saw the only snow removal equipment in Hawaii up there, but sadly there was no snow this time if year.  The summit was amazing.  It was so cool to see all the observatories, even though we couldn’t see inside them.  It was pretty cold and windy up there, so we just stayed at the summit long enough to watch the Sun set.  It was pretty amazing watching the Sun set above the clouds.

After watching the Sun set, we headed back partway down the mountain, where it’s warmer, and a little less windy.  Our tour guide set up a telescope and started pointing out different constellations, and planets, and showing us a few things in the telescope.  I could have stayed there all night looking at the stars.  The view was pretty spectacular.  We saw 8 to 10 meteors, and many satellites.  I don’t think I have ever seen a satellite before.

When we were in Hawaii time didn’t seem to go fast at all, but now that we have been back a month, it really did go fast.  I really enjoyed it, and hope to get back there sometime again in my lifetime.  I just wish it wasn’t so far away, and so expensive.

On day seven we spent the entire day at Volcanoes National Park.  It’s just like your typical national park, lots of trails and nature, but this one has a volcano too!  When we got there we were just in time to catch a ranger guided tour into the caldera of Kilauea.  The caldera was closed because the air quality is always changing, so the only way to get down there is on one of these tours.

It was a nice tour down.  The tour guide pointed out different vegetation and explained how vulnerable the indigenous plants, and animals are because they evolved to not have any defense mechanisms.  People have brought other plants to the islands and they grow wild suffocating out other plants.  Wild pigs are their biggest problem.  They eat big areas of vegetation leaving big holes, which fill up with water.  The water is breading grounds for mosquitoes, which spread disease, and kill indigenous birds, which then aren’t there to pollinate the plants, so even more plants die off.  It one big vicious circle.

Inside the Kilauea caldera was pretty cool.  It’s probably as close as a person can get to Halema’uma’u crater.  That is where it is still active and steaming.  Kilauea is actually the longest active volcano.  It’s been flowing since 1982, and the flows are always changing.  When we were there all the flows were underground.

After the tour to the Kilauea caldera we checked out a few other things in the park, some steam vents, some old lava tubes where lava once flowed underground, and a bunch of old lava flows.  We followed the old lava flows down to the cost.  It was pretty impressive.

We stayed in the park until sunset to see the glow from Halema’uma’u crater.  It was pretty cool, but too far away to get a decent picture.  Seeing Kilauea was pretty darn cool, and obviously a learning experience.

Day five we left Oahu, and went to the Big Island.  We stayed in Hilo, which is the second largest city in Hawaii, but still rather small.  The whole island really felt small townish.  The first day we just went for a drive to check the island out.  We drove up the north shore since our plans for the next day were to go south.  Many areas felt like I was at home.  They had rolling hills of farmland, and little crappy towns with just a bar and convenience store.

Day six we drove sound to Punalu’u Black Sand Beach.  The black sand was weird.  Since it was black, your mind thinks you will get dirty in it, but it’s sand so it just brushes off.  That beach is famous for it’s sea turtles, but they were all out it the water, so we just saw a head peeking up from time to time.

After the beach we kept driving south.  That evening we were going night snorkeling with manta rays in Kona, but had the day to explore.

We then went to South Point.  It’s the southern most tip of the US.  It was a long rough road out there, and it really felt like the middle of nowhere.  At the point there was a cliff and people were jumping off into the ocean.  It was a crazy high cliff.  I didn’t even like to get close to the edge.  The Wife was crazy and wanted to jump.  I wasn’t going to let her, but then a few guys just jumped and were waiting for her in the water.  She jumped and hit the water hard.  She got a huge bruise on her leg, and lost her contacts when she hit the water.  She was a good sport about it though, and didn’t complain much about her pain.

From there we went on to go snorkeling with manta rays.  We went on a short catamaran ride and were just off the shore.  They placed a light rig in the water.  The light attracts plankton, which in turn attracts the manta rays.  It didn’t take long for them to appear.  It was so peaceful just floating in the water and watching how graceful the giant manta rays were.  They would come at the lights and just do flips eating up all the plankton they could get.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from night snorkeling, but it was pretty amazing.  It was just quite and peaceful watching the fish and manta rays swim around.

From there we had a crazy drive across the island.  I just set the GPS and followed it.  It was crazy drive through the middle of nowhere.  It was a very windy road with places that the road was actually missing.  It was super dark, and raining, and half the drive was uphill where it was hard to get over 40 MPH, and the second half was downhill and I never touched the gas peddle for the longest time, and it was hard not to speed.  I was so glad when we finally made it back to our hotel.