Good morning. It's 5 AM local time and I'm out on the balcony in the dark, listening to the waves and writing.
I think I stopped Thursday morning, and I think it's Saturday today. :) Thursday we had another lovely breakfast buffet (included in the room fee - ought to be, the room is expensive enough) and then I went to lecture and the kids did whatever they do while I'm in lecture. I think they did some homework and then walked on the beach. The lectures are consistently good, which is one reason I like to attend these Symposia Medicus conferences (another reason is of course location). There are lectures on dermatology, pelvic pain, breast cancer screening, office "psychiatry" and more. I'm particularly looking forward to a psych lecture this morning on "the unexplained medical complaint." There's also another on "The difficult patient;" we all have some of those, so I look forward to seeing what he says. This psychiatrist prescribes books as well as meds and counseling, which I love, since I do that a lot myself.
After the lectures, which ended around 1, the kids and I ate our leftovers from the day before for lunch and then drove about 1/2 hour southwest to a town called Poi'pu on the south coast. We saw a blowhole called the Spouting Horn, which is an unusual one that has one site that spouts water and another that makes a groaning sound with the waves. It was very soothing to watch and listen, but there's not much else to see there (except for some vendors selling souvenirs and jewelry), so we headed east to a place called Makawehi, where we did an easy hike down to the lithified cliffs, which are limestone cliffs by the sea. From there it was an easy walk down to Shipwreck Beach (there were no wrecked ships that I could see), where we hung out for a little while.
After that we went to the town of Koloa, did a little shopping and had dinner. The restaurant was called the Garden Island Grille, and had burgers and such. The prices were decent (everything's more expensive here). The food was OK; the server was extremely enthusiastic, perhaps because we were eating dinner at 4:30, and talked us into burgers made with the local beef, which she said was amazing, and I thought was rather tasteless. I had a BBQ burger, and the sauce was mildly volcanic (I don't do hot stuff well) so I guess it evened out. I'm sorry to say that the fries were very good, and I probably consumed too many of them.
We shopped a bit more - we bought Hawaiian decks of cards with cool facts on them, and my younger daughter bought a stuffed "emoji" pineapple for her friend who likes pineapples (it's super cute). Then ICE CREAM. The prices were actually pretty close to any tourist place in Michigan, and the serving sizes commensurate. I had a Lilikoi sherbet - I love the Lilikoi soda here - and it was very good. There was a feral chicken lurking near us, and when one of us lost a bit of cone on the floor it disappeared immediately down its gullet. It was quite comical to watch when one piece went under the table; you could see the chicken contemplating how to get there without going near our feet and risking being kicked or stepped on (not that we would have done that). Finally it made a rush for it and gulped it down.
We drove back to the hotel and got there before dark (I have a strong dislike for driving in strange places in the dark) and then took showers and relaxed. I had a bit of a stomachache (perhaps from the local beef, or the hot BBQ sauce) so we turned off the lights around 8 PM.
In the morning Friday I felt much better. No lectures in the morning, as the breakout sessions were at 3 PM (I love the way this conference is scheduled). This left us free all morning and early afternoon to plan a longer adventure, so we had a somewhat later breakfast and drove about an hour to Waimea Canyon in the western part of the island. The speed limit up the mountain is 25 mph, which is about right, but we kept being passed (going the other way) by people going much faster than I would have been comfortable driving on the twists and turns and switchbacks. I was grateful for the 25 mph speed limit but not for the tailgaters. I pulled over when possible to let them speed by, but it wasn't always possible.
We stopped at a few lookouts, and then at the main overlook, then started searching for the trailhead for a particular hike. Once we found the place, though, it was getting late. It was a hike to a waterfall, listed as a "moderately strenuous" hike, but was pretty steep in places. We made it to a cliff overlook but 2/3 of us didn't think we could make it to the waterfall and back in time to get us back to the hotel in time for my afternoon lectures, so we bailed. We hiked for a good hour+, though, so it was not for nothing. Had we been there earlier, we may have done the whole thing. One of the kids is not as much a hiker as the other, so she was a deciding factor, as well as me having some issues with a trochanteric bursitis on one side (lower hip irritation).
We drove to the end of the road to see the Kalalau overlook, but it was very cloudy and we had to wait for the clouds to clear in order to see anything. I thought it was worth it, but the younger kid had had enough and was getting tired, so we called it a day and drove back to the hotel. On the way we stopped at a trading post that has a great selection of freshwater pearls, and the kids got a couple of souvenirs for themselves and their friends.
We got back just in time for me to get to my 3 PM session. There was another after that, and I got out around 6. There were lemon squares and brownies and such so I didn't feel too bad about missing lunch. The kids had some food back at the room, so they didn't starve. They went for a walk on the beach, and we got back to the room around the same time. We walked over away from the hotel, looking for a place to have dinner, and found a little hole-in-the-wall burger place that also had milkshakes and a very pleasant staff. We got take out; as we were waiting for our food, another family came up to order, and we started chatting. The mom is attending the conference and she was originally from Michigan (!), so we traded names and places for a bit until our food was ready.
By then it was raining (more of a hard mist than actual rain), so we got a bit damp but not too bad. The burgers were GREAT (much better than the other restaurant, sorry) and the milkshakes were just what the doctor ordered. ;)
We watched some Studio C videos on YouTube on the hotel TV, and then went to bed around 8 or 8:30.
Today we have to check out around noon, which is nice, because then the kids don't have to wander around homeless for a couple of hours while my conference finishes. After that we will go grocery shopping and then drive up to our AirBnB place on the north side of the island. Stay tuned.
aloha,
wb
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