2/5 and 2/6 Settling In

We took a walk to the beach before going to the grocery store. Food is so much more expensive here, which makes sense since we are on an island. We bought most of the goods at the Times grocery in Lihue and then drove to Waimea. We intended to have brunch at the Plantation Cottages where we can pick up wi-fi, but due to the sagging economy, they only serve lunch and dinner now. We went back to town and ate at Obsessions, a small café next to the Big Save grocery store. The food was excellent. We picked up our milk and meat at the Big Save and then headed up to camp. It was a beautiful day – sunny and 79 in Waimea. The views on the way up to camp (a twisty 15 miles from sea level to 3500 feet) were magnificent. The road follows a beautiful canyon – many people call this the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. We didn’t stop at any of the viewpoints, however, as we needed to get our food stored away at camp. By the time we got to the museum to pick up our key, the temperature was 63 – a bit chillier than on the shore. We got the cold food store away in one of the fridges in the community kitchen and put all of the dry goods in a huge food locker (apparently critter-proof). We then set up our room. There is a bunk bed and a single. Dave is using the single and I am in the bottom of the bunk. We are using the top bunk for storage. We bumped into Lelani doing laundry. She and her husband, Alan, were here last year. They live in Alaska and have been coming here for a month to 6 weeks for the last 12 years. They have one week left so we will be working with them this coming week. We went to the kitchen to start cooking. The plan is to cook most everything on one day and then just heat up after work each day. There is a Super Bowl party at Katie’s mother’s house in Waimea (we went last year), so we made snickerdoodles to take there. Finding an oven that worked was interesting. We finally got the smallest oven lit, but the numbers were worn off the dial so we had to guess the temp. We couldn’t find any cookie sheets (I’m not sure one would fit anyway) so we baked on a small pizza pan. We must have been pretty close on the temp as they came out perfect (according to Dave and Alan, the cookie testers). We then made meatloaf, macaroni and cheese and a pan of brownies for the week. We had sugar snap peas with our meatloaf and macaroni for dinner and then invited Lelani and Alan over for movie night. We had brought a number of DVD’s with us. We watched “The Fastest Indian” with Anthony Hopkins – a great movie – and snacked on brownies. It was a very enjoyable evening. The wind picked up and then the rain came down. It lessened a bit when Lelani and Alan were heading back to their cottage so that was lucky. It was a wild night – the wind blew and the rains came down in torrents. The wind blew open the door to the bunkroom several times until finally we put a heavy bin in front of it – even then it blew the bin a few inches as we discovered this morning. It was not a restful night, but we will deal. We showered and then went to the kitchen (about 10 feet away in the next building). We had hot cereal and cocoa for breakfast and are now baking banana bread for the week. We will go down the mountain early so we can post this blog before going to the party. You will not hear from us again until Friday when we come down the hill again, but you can email us and we will pick up the messages Friday through Sunday. For those of you who are football fans, good luck to your team.