…but the marriage is still a fine and wonderful thing!
Well, I’m back, rested, and ready (“tanned” would be inaccurate… ever see a tan polar bear?) from a lovely diversion with Mrs. Bear to Maui and Kauai for our honeymoon. A sampling of the lovely scenery we enjoyed is above; if I get real ambitious-like I might even put up one of them there photo-blog thingies.
In celebration of my return, I’ve started re-activating TTLB functionality. Search is now re-enabled, as is registration for new weblogs. No promises that everything is back to perfect yet; that will be the task for the next few days and weeks.
Thanks to everyone who offered their congratulations and best wishes, and to all for your continued patience. TTLB is back in business: stay tuned as I continue to bring us back up to speed, and beyond…
Update: As threatened, I’ve added a photoblog of our trip. Select ‘More’ to enjoy…
Mr. and Mrs. Bear’s Honeymoon Photoblog
We started our trip in Maui, appropriately enough, because it was there, on a starlit beach, that I proposed to Lady M on a previous trip.
After the hectic craziness of our wedding, Maui was basically a place to crash and relax. Since we had been there before, we didn’t feel an obligation to do a huge amount of activities or sightsee all that much, which was exactly what we needed: there was simply a lot of lounging and decompression. So, not a huge amount of photos to share from Maui.
But here’s a few nice shots of the area we stayed in (Wailea) at sunset:
We did do one true “activity” in Maui: we took a submarine tour! This was actually pretty spiffy: Adventures has a real live sub which does dives off the coast of Maui and tours around several local reefs. If you are looking for a way to see some undersea life and are averse to scuba or snorkeling (or, like us, were just plain feeling lazy at the time) I’d definitely recommend them.
Here’s their sub:
And here are a few undersea shots:
After a few days of relaxation on Maui, we were off to Kauai, which was new to us. We stayed at the Princeville Hotel on the north end of the island, which was quite a change from Wailea in Maui: much less sunny (it rained quite a bit, in fact), but very, very lush and beautiful. Reminded me a lot of a warmer, tropical version of Seattle, where I made my home for a few years and still find myself missing sometimes.
A phrase you will hear nowhere else but Kauai is “rainbow fatigue”. Amazingly, rainbows are pretty much a daily occurence down there. Here’s one viewed from the Princeville on our second day there:
Everyone will tell you that you haven’t really been to Kauai unless you do a helicopter tour. So, we did. And they were right: it’s a heck of a place to see from the air. Our flight was a bit more rainy than we would have liked, but still showed some spectacular scenery:
Back on solid ground, we did a drive up to the Waimea Canyon, also known as the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific”. Having seen the one in Arizona, I’m comfortable saying that it lives up to the name:
Kauai is a neat place to be weather-wise, in that if you don’t like the weather where you are, generally it’s a pretty simple problem to solve: just drive an hour to the other side of the island. And so we did one day, escaping the somewhat drippy weather up north to visit the sunny southern coast:
Back on the north side, we ventured out on the water to tour the famous Na Pali coast, which is essentially completely inaccessible except by air or by sea. It was well worth it:
And finally, one last image, if somewhat out of sequence, to sum up our trip. Here’s me and my lovely bride showing off our new wedding bands, just a few scant yards from the spot in Maui where she accepted my proposal:
