Le video, as promised

Show turtles aloha

Our Hawaii Adventure on Wednesday took us to Laniakea Beach, where the Hawaiian green turtles crawl onto the beach to sun themselves after they eat seaweed. These are huge turtles--the biggest one we saw was 250 pounds. I feel really bad we found this spot after my parents and Kelsey visited, though we'll take them when they return (sorry Kels!).

We forgot our camera, which is really lame of us, but luckily Todd's phone takes pretty good photos. When we first got to the beach we were standing at the edge of the water, trying to get a shot of the eight or so turtles swimming in the waves. We weren't very successful. Then we sheepishly noticed that about 40 yards away were two turtles basking on the beach, surrounded by people. Hint--look for the bright red rope and huge crowd.

The turtles are so cool. We also got to see two more come out of the ocean and use their flippers to move up the beach out of most of the waves. Then they just plop down and chill. Video of crawling turtle to follow--it's still on Todd's phone.

Also, they're surprisingly cute for such gigantic sea creatures.

I looked out the window and what did I see?

The legendary Hawaiian centipede from hell crawling on our beautiful plants.

Yes folks, we've finally had our first sighting of the stinging, freaky reason we get our house sprayed. (And notice in this picture--it has antennas or something in the front, and then equally long stingers in the back. Eew eew eew.)

BUT, our bug man told me if they're around during the day it's because they're injured, because they're nocturnal. And this one was falling off the leaves and moving pretty erratically, which I'm hoping means it encountered our pest control barrier.

It then moved from the plants to our entryway, which elicited a squeal of panic from yours truly. But then I learned another happy fact--these bugs (at least the injured ones) can't climb the one step we have that leads to our door. Score!

And as always, the bug man wasn't lying when he said rain brings these things out. Nothing like a tropical storm to really welcome us to Hawaii. Mosquitoes out at noon, and a monster centipede. Nice.

So yeah, it was about 6 inches long, and incredibly and freakily fast. It moved like a dragon*, very serpentine-like. I have before and after photos--meaning, Before Raid and After Raid (BR, AR). I waited about a half hour AR until I dared put a penny near it. I didn't waste a quarter--this coin is going to be outside until the dead bug is gone. Just in case it starts moving again. I wonder if birds eat this nastiness?

* I have never seen a dragon, but I've imagined how they would look and move. Plus, I'm reading Eragon again, so dragons are on my mind. And I'm a dork.

We're not in Kansas any more

It's weird to me to live somewhere with weather. Real weather, the kind you hear about on the news (not just the admittedly major flash floods we get in southern Nevada). A hurricane was headed to Hawaii, but luckily now it's been downgraded to a tropical storm. I know people in Texas and Florida are probably rolling their eyes, but I've been surrounded by mountains my entire life, so real weather is still amazing to me.

Also, notice how it says the temperature is 80 but it feels like 85? How does that happen? Dang humidity.