We have started

Late night arrival at the ranch

the pretty babies I got to babysit

Ohi'a

So we are on our trip! It's been about a little over month now. We started out flying into Kailua-Kona, Hawaii because last year when we were starting to plan this trip I posted the question to my friends, "Do you have any contacts in other countries we could stay with?" I got the reply from my good friend Liz telling me that she lived on the Big Island and its not exactly another country but it's like another country. And it sure is. We finally get our tickets and it turns out Liz is going to be in Europe the week that we fly in. So Plan B, which is not a hotel since that would blow our very shoestring budget. Looking for other options we figured we could look up some Couchsurfers or if worse came to worse, we could just sleep in a rental car for the first week. 

Luckily, my mom's best friend and a second mom to me has a cousin that lives in HI. We stayed with them and got to work on their ranch in exchange for a place to stay.  I watched their babies and Tim helped build fences, which is harder then you think considering it's in lava rock.  We had a great time semi-roughing it in the Hawaiian housing tents. Their own house is constructed of giant tarp yurts as the bedrooms with a living room and kitchen connecting the two in the middle.  It may sound primitive, but was really quite luxurious for an off-the-grid rainforest ranch home.