Hawaiian Vacation: Maui Gold Pineapple Plantation Tour

I am not a pineapple expert by any means. I know what they look like. I know what they taste like. I wouldn’t be able to pick a ripe pineapple if my life depended on it. Until. I took a tour of the Maui Gold Pineapple Plantation. It took around an hour and a half, and we took a little bus all over that place. This might sound like something that was pretty boring. It was not. In fact, it’s a testament to the fact that if you know your subject really well, then practically anything can be super interesting. …

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A Chester Greenwood Adventure

Saturday was Chester Greenwood Day, a big event here in Farmington. For those who aren’t up on their Farmington history, Chester Greenwood invented earmuffs right here in our cozy town back in 1873 (at the ripe old age of 15!). It became quite the cottage industry here, and they still commemorate him each year with a parade. (Where everyone and everything wears earmuffs. I am not making this up. Daniela noted that one reason I might like Farmington is because it feels a lot like the Punxsutawney portrayed in Groundhog Day. She’s not wrong. Swap out Phil for Earmuffs, and …

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Hawaiian Vacation: Mount Haleakala and Iao Valley

Continuing on the report of my trip to Maui, let’s talk about Mount Haleakala. Remember the big volcano I talked about yesterday? That’s Mount Haleakala. It’s also a National Park (so it costs $30 to visit). Now, when I hear “volcano,” I picture lava shooting into the air, with the occasional earthquake for good measure. This one doesn’t have that. In fact, it doesn’t even have a crater. If Frodo was supposed to chuck the ring into Mount Haleakala, he’d have just wandered around for a few days looking for a place to chuck it. (Are you taking notes, Sauron? …

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Hawaiian Vacation: The Road to Hana

I’d heard about the road to Hana plenty of times before I actually drove it. “It’s magical.” “It’s the best part of Maui.” “You’ll love it.” It was odd, since it’s rare to hear so much about a road to a place and so little about the place itself. Now that I’ve actually done the complete loop around the island, I’ve got a better idea about what they’re talking about. First off, what is it. Maui basically consists of two mountains: a big one (with a volcano at the top) and a smaller one (that I assume also had a …

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When Sump Pumps Attack

We interrupt this regularly scheduled post on Hawaii for an emergency bulletin. The day after we came back from Hawaii, the alarm on the sump pump started going off in the basement. This isn’t terribly shocking. The thing is tempermental at best. So I silenced it, and then silenced it again when it went off an hour later. I checked the power breaker to see if maybe something had switched off, and it did seem that something might have. So I made sure all was as it should be, and thought no more of it. Until it went off again …

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