I’ve been having some monitor calibration problems, so I hope these turn out ok. It seems like my cheapo monitor is pretty bad… Well that’s what you get when going for the cheapo big one I guess 
One of the nice things about the state of Hawaii (except for the obvious stuff) is that none of the beaches are private. Basically this means that you are allowed to access any beach at any major Hotel. We were on our way back to our hotel when the sun was setting and I wouldn’t have made it there in time. We quickly pulled into the Four Seasons hotel and went to the beach and experienced this lovely sunset, accompanied by some local sea turtles.
USS Arizona was a battleship of the United States Navy. Arizona is best known for her cataclysmic and dramatic sinking, with the loss of 1,177 lives, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the event that brought about US involvement in World War II. The wreck was not salvaged, and continues to lie at the floor of the harbor. It is the site of the USS Arizona Memorial National Park which commemorates the 1,177 lives lost on that day.
Update by Ine:
USS Arizona: The ship that weeps for her dead.
The black seepage in the water (on the last picture, left) is described as “Black Tears” of the Arizona. Up until today there’s still oil that seeps out of the wreck.
I was lucky enough to talk to one of the survivors: Robert G. Kinzler.
He is spending his time as a volunteer (actually, one of the longest serving) in the museum of the memorial. He informs tourists about his experiences and provides them with his personal interpretation of the events surrounding the Pearl Harbor attack.
On the 7th of December 1941 he was a Morse code radio operator assigned to Headquarters Company, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Regiment at Schofield Barracks.
Not only was it very touching to hear his stories, I also have to admit, this is something that really stuck to me throughout the time we’ve spend in Hawaii. There’s still lots of military areas so even though Pearl City/ Pearl Harbor is a specific area on the island, you’re constantly driving by those restricted / prohibited areas. I even saw a submarine heading out to open seas… Kinda neat to see one that’s still active:).
I also wanted to add a picture that I took. I was really fascinated by this control tower (on Ford Island). At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the tower structure had been completed along with a portion of the platform on the top. They’re planning to clean up the tower which would allow public access. Would love to visit that one!
I hope everyone has an enjoyable week! We’re heading out to Stanley Park on Friday evening with some friends, for a ride on the Ghost Train. I’m really looking forward to that and hopefully we can start painting again this weekend (pick up where we left off before Summer started).
A diamond head shaped cloud passes by diamond head at sunset in Honolulu, Hawaii.
We’re back from Hawaii and back to work.
During our stay in Hawaii, we decided to search for some Lost film locations as I am a big fan of the series. First thing we found was the location of the camp of the Dharma Initiative. Turns out this was filmed at a YMCA camp called Camp Erdman (map location), there was a band camp (yes, the one with trumpets etc like in American Pie) going on, so we couldn’t snoop around, but Ine managed to grab some sneaky flyby pictures like the next two:
Here you can see the camp in some screen captures of the series:
After that we decided to look for the survivors’ beach which according to our search on the internet would have been filmed on police beach (map location). We found the beach quite easily by parking on Papailoa road in Haleiwa and walking to the beach using the public shoreline access road. The movie location was a bit further to the left. When we arrived at the site, we saw that the destroyed survivors camp was set up and security was patrolling the scene. Apparently they had been filming there 2 days before for season 6. Below is a picture of Sawyer’s Tent with a piece of Oceanic Airlines flight 815 
The following picture is a screen capture from the tv series showing the tent before the camp was attacked.
We discovered some more movie sites like Hurley’s golf course, … and eventually found out that they were currently filming in a specific location. While we couldn’t enter the place since security had it blocked, Ine saw Hurley while driving by.
Yesterday, after arriving home picking up Grizzly at the breeders, we passed by a movie set of Twilight: New Moon I think (map location), could have been something else since they are running close to release date, but I know they were still filming 2/3 weeks ago. They have been filming all over the place.
So far for nerd posts, next posts will be more “pictury”/”touristy”
We woke up yesterday morning, and made another last minute decision: we were going to Mount Baker.
It’s been a little bit less than a year since we’ve been there, and the weather was nice so we decided to head out there.
Last time it started snowing, so we were unable to see how far you could actually drive up. We made it to up the ski area but that was it.
This year we first stopped at the Visitor Center and the park ranger told us that we definitely needed to go to Artist Point. On clear days there are stunning vistas of some of the most breathtaking scenery in northwest Washington. There’s a very accessible path around dazzling Picture Lake with views of Mt. Shuksan brilliantly reflected in its waters. On the other side you can see the top of Mount Baker.
Artist Point’s elevation is 1600m while Baker is about 3286 meters high in total. Definitely worth mentioning, it’s an active volcano… It is the second-most active volcano in the range after Mount Saint Helens.
Below a little video of Mount Saint Helens. This what could happen to Baker…
We definitely had a wonderful day, and Grizzly loved the lakes and the snow! Some pictures we took on our hikes:
Fun fact:
Mount Baker Ski Area is one of the snowiest places in the world. It set the world record for snowfall in a single season, 95 feet or 28.96m
I haven’t gotten around updating the blog lately due to some very busy weeks and the launch of new versions and remakes of some of my all time favorite games: Monkey Island and Battlefield Tonight, I forced myself not to play and to upload some pictures to the blog. It’s a bit of a chaotic post of unrelated events, but well..
Thursday after work we met up with a friend of ours in downtown Vancouver, had a lovely walk on the seawall, ate some great takeaway Shawarma (it took me some time to actually figure out that it was Shoarma…) on the beach and finished it all of with a Marble Slab ice cream (Best ice cream ever).
Last weekend we decided to due a quick day trip to Seattle. The morning started out great with some deer standing near our house (it seems to be deer season, we’ve seen about 10 of them around our house in one week), drove over to Seattle and did a quick visit to the city. We only stayed in Seattle for 2 hours and decided to drive to Bellevue where we saw Bill Gates’ house and ended the day with a great fondue menu at The Melting Pot.
Below are some more pictures of when my parents where visiting and we visited Cypress Mountain. It was strange to see the Vancouver 2010 Olympic half pipe in summer. This winter, we’ll be more or less at the exact same spot as we got tickets for the woman’s halfpipe event.
In a few days we’ll have some new visitors, so we definitely have more to look forward to!
We had a bit of a lazy Sunday, which created some time for me to do some photo filtering/processing. We had an early start due to a dog incident… (just spent 100$ on new blinds so we wouldn’t be woken up by the light anymore…), so we headed out for a 10K hike around Buntzen Lake, which is about 2-3km from our home and afterward we went for lunch at our favorite Sushi Place, where we treated ourselves to Spicy Tuna Sashimi, Spicy salmon sashimi, an “awesome roll” (it was actually very good, but that’s just the name) and Ebi Gyoza, price: 28$(+-18EUR) (including drinks). Can’t beat that price
We finished it of with a visit to Starbucks where I got a “Double chunky chocolate chip frappuccino” and Ine got something similar with strawberry (Basically these are more or less milkshakes, but starbucks likes to fancy up the names…).
That’s it for me for Tofino, I have plenty more, but that would just bore you all. I have so much stuff left to post I’ll just continue to go through them when I find some time.
Here are some more pictures from our trip to Ucluelet – Tofino – Pacific Rim National Park on Vancouver Island.
Kris Taeleman | 
