Canada and New England Cruise October 2012

On October 4, 2012 we boarded the Enchantment of the Seas in Baltimore and met up with John and Cornella Humphrey for our cruise to New England and Canada (Saint Johns and Halifax).

Welcome Aboard

We departed the Baltimore harbor early evening on the 4th. We spent the 5th on-board cruising to our first port of Portland, ME. We just relaxed with our friends and enjoyed our journey.

We arrived in Portland on October 6th at 11:30 am. We opted to do The Best of Portland and Kennebunkport shore excursion. This tour took a motor coach to see the city highlights of Portland and the Portland Head Light. The Head Light was beautiful.

Portland Head Light

Rusty

John & Cornella

From the Head Light we went to the charming seaside town of Kennebunkport (the Bush's were in residence, saw the flag flying as well as Secret Service). We explored this quaint town by foot. Had lobster rolls and blueberry pie - yummy.

Cornella among the pumpkins

Our next port of call on October 7th was Bar Harbor, ME. LOVE Bar Harbor. Here we opted to do the Best of Bar Harbor excursion. This tour included the best of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island as well as the natural landscape of Acadia National Park (AWESOME) and Cadillac Mountain as well as a visit to the Lobster Oceanarium, plus we got see one of the old Bar Harbor cottages.

Acadia National Park

Rusty - Cadillac Mountain

Sheryl - Cadillac Mountain

John and Cornella

Old Bar Harbor Cottage

The next stop on our adventure was October 8th in Saint Johns, New Brunswick. John's grandfather was from Moncton, which is north of Saint Johns. It was too far to get there and back in one day so, we chose to do St. Andrews and Bay of Fundy Scenic Railway Combo. We boarded a motor coach for a scenic drive to St. Andrews by-the-Sea. We learned about some of the history, culture and folklore of the area. We walked around St. Andrews but it was bitterly cold.

St. Andrews by-the-Sea

Scenic drive

From St. Andrews we went to the Bay of Fundy and boarded the NB Southern Railway to take a ride over the tide pools - these are very interesting.

Our last port of call was Halifax, Nova Scotia on October 9th. Here we took the Historic Halifax City Tour. Our tour guide wore a kilt (and yikes it was cold). We heard about the days of rum-running as well as privateering. We saw the oldest working brewery as well as heard about the Halifax explosion. As part of the tour we went to the Victoria Public Gardens, a 17-acre park.

We also got to tour the Halifax Citadel - one of Canada's most popular and visited national historic sites.

The Old Town Clock

Citadel barracks

Citadel guard

Citadel cannon

After departing Halifax, we took two days to cruise back to Baltimore. The colors weren't quite as vibrant as we had hoped and it was very cold and wet, but nonetheless we enjoyed our trip. While on-board, we got to enjoy a lot of wonderful entertainment in the evenings, as well as some incredible meals and we also attended a few cocktail parties. As always it was great traveling with our friends John and Cornella.  We look forward to many more adventures with them.

John & Cornella - Sheryl & Rusty

We departed Baltimore on the 12th for the drive back to Nashville. We saw some beautiful scenery along the journey through Maryland, Virginia and Tennessee.

Hilo, Hawaii April 14, 2012

Hilo is the "wet" side of the Big Island with over 200 inches of rainfall per year. Where Kona has a lot of volcanic rock, Hilo is a lush rainforest. We arrived at 7:00 am and the highs today will be in the upper 70's. Although it has threatened rain on our visit to the islands, we never actually had any rain.

Our journey today will be to Volcanoes National Park. We drove through a tropical rainforest and ascended to 4300 feet above sea level to view Kilauea Volcano - home of Pele, the legendary Goddess of Fire.

Part of today's adventure was to drive along the crater rim to see the volcano from more than one perspective but the rim road was partially closed due to recent volcanic activity. A lot of VOG - Volcanic Ash Smog.

Since we couldn't do the rim drive, our guide took us to an another section of the park where there are fields of volcanic rock.

We had the opportunity to walk around and explore the volcanic rock.










After this stop we went to the Thurston Lava Tube and walked through it and the rainforest that surrounds it.

Rusty in Lava Tube

Sheryl at Lava Tube

Walking through Rain Forest

Again Rusty and I would have loved a little more time to hike and explore but we saw some huge craters.  The volcanic craters are miles wide and very deep.

When we left VNP we stopped at the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut factory and gift shop. They had some beautiful gardens here. We then made a brief stop at a Zoo before we headed into town and had lunch near an ocean side park.

Ocean side park

We drove through downtown Hilo and made a left turn and drove up this hill. Right at the top, still in town, we came across Rainbow Falls. Really quite impressive when you consider it is in town.

All in all we were very pleased with our adventures in Hawaii. The vegetation and flowers are spectacular with hundreds of varieties. The people of Hawaii were very friendly. It was everything we hoped it would be.

Kailua Kona April 13, 2012

We watched the sunrise over Kona as we arrived at 7:00 am. Beautiful. The highs today were again in the mid 70's. Seas are calm, we are both excited about our waterfall adventure.

For Kona we opted to do the Kohala Waterfalls Adventure. Our tour guide Stephanie picked us up in a van for the drive to the remote north end of the island. There were only 5 couples in our group. Unfortunately, there was one couple that were a pair of sourpusses and complained most of the time. Stephanie provided us with a very informative narrative about the rich natural and cultural heritage of the island. Kona is on one side of the Big Island and only receives about 20 inches of rainfall per year so you see a lot of the volcanic rock along the drive. You have mountains on one side and the Pacific on the other, quite an impressive drive.

Mountain in distance with volcanic rock

We arrived in the small town of Kapaau in North Kohala which is the birthplace of King Kamehameha and where his original statue resides in front of the Civic Center.

In Kapaau we made a brief stop to use the facilities and to change vehicles. We will continue on to the falls in a rugged Pinzgauer. It was quite a bumpy ride but we saw some beautiful scenery. The further north we got the more the scenery changes from the volcanic rock to rich vegetation. Once we arrive at our destination, Stephanie leads us on a 1.5 mile hike with an abundance of waterfalls, some bridges and idyllic streams. We saw some traditional Hawaiian taro terraces and irrigation flumes.

Taro Terrace

We saw some truly spectacular waterfalls. The area was rich and lush with foliage and vegetation. At one waterfall we even had the opportunity to swim. Rusty was the only adventurous soul as the water was ice cold.

As Rusty and I both love waterfalls, this was a wonderful choice for us. We could have spent more times there exploring and hiking.

 

After the waterfalls we took the German truck to a picnic area to have our lunch. What views of the Pacific we had from this spot.

The Kohala waterfalls were truly spectacular.







We departed Kona at 6:00 pm. We were scheduled to be around the Mount Kilauea Volcano around midnight to see if we could see activity on the volcano. Unfortunately we were unable to view Kilauea as it was just too overcast. We continued on our way to Hilo.