Still Kickin'

 It has been a while since I last popped into update this blog. We are all alive and well here at Dogpound North and the clunky blogger app makes updating this journal a bit of a chore, especially if I don't have a bunch of exciting things to share.

It has been a pretty decent winter here at DPN, not to cold, but a fair amount of snow. We aren't complaining though we can always use the moisture, no matter what form it comes in. January and February just slipped by without a lot of fanfare. I did manage to get to the pool on a semi-regular basis and combined those trips with wellness checks on Mom's condo. 

Brenda and I did spend 7 or 8 days clearing out Mom's things and preparing the condo for sale. Not sure when that will happen, but it is ready to go whenever. 

With all that behind us we thought we probably needed to get away a bit, and booked ourselves a trip to Maui for a little sun and sand. We headed off early in March and spent three weeks touring the Island, watching whales and sampling a bunch of sub-par restaurants. The best meals we had the entire time came out of our own kitchen. We did find a great food truck, Da Nani Pirates, that did a great job on fish tacos.

It was Brenda's first time to Maui so there was lots to show her. I have been there a few times but we did manage to do something I had never been able to accomplish before and circumnavigate the whole island. The northern end is narrow and scenic but I had done that before. However the road the Hana is usually an out and back affair as the road around that end of the island is quite often closed, as well as in the past being off limits to rental cars. I think they recommend a high clearance vehicle but with a little caution we managed to slip around with our Mustang convertible with only a little dirt and dust to show for our efforts. It is a beautiful drive and only about 10 miles in the middle is rough and narrow, although some parts hang along seaside cliffs there was nothing really bad if you were willing to take it easy and use a little caution. And only a couple of times did we meet others in places where we couldn't sneak past each other. Kind of like being back on a seismic line in the old days.

Honolua Bay on the North End, Molokai in the background

We stayed in a condo near Maalaea and enjoyed a bunch of great sunrises.

And we did see a few whales, one time we had three, Mama, baby, and an escort breaching all at once. The human eye can catch a lot more than a camera so the best pictures are saved in our minds, but these might have to do for the rest of you.

And then they said goodbye and went deep.

When it came time to head home we were at the airport when it seemed they couldn't get our plane started and cancelled our flight. It took awhile but Air Canada sprung for a room for the night, not fancy, but clean and a nice pool to cool off in after a long hot wait at the airport. It didn't hurt my feelings that they brought over a new plane the next day for our ride home while the mechanics worked on the broken one. It was a good time on Maui and seeing as how they had put some of the folks who were in a hurry on other airlines for the ride home we had a lot of extra room to stretch out on the plane.

Last summer our trailer had some damage to the front cap and the roof from a combination of falling trees and a big wind storm here at home, so it spent the winter up at Woody's getting all that addressed by the insurance company. We brought her home today, so are hoping to get back out and see some country this summer.