Jared and Suzy Halterman

We've moved. We are trying a different site that just works easier for us to share pictures. You can see new pictures at:

http://web.mac.com/suzy_halterman

Life in Kirksville Missouri

Our beautiful backyard of this has now been replaced by...

Lots of this....

This is literally our back yard, those buildings you see are our apartent comlex which is surrounded by a huge corn field and soy bean field

And we are surrounded by lovely sights such as these

It may not be quite as breathtaking as our views in Hawaii but we really like it here except for very brief moments of wondering "what have we done?" Despite its quite pathetic appearance, Kirksville is actually a really fun place to live.

The front of our apartment building

Jared after his "White Coat Induction Ceremony" which is basically just a trick where they give you a white coat in a ceremony very similar to graduation so that you feel like you are really close to becoming a doctor and forget about the countless years of misery, study, and huge amounts of money you have to pay before you can actually be a doctor. They are so clever.

Trip to South Island of New Zealand- June 07

Milford Sound

Gorgeous scenery everywhere

Hike to the seal colonies

Living in a campervan for 2 weeks

Hiking Franz Josef Glacier

Fiordlands National Park

Hiking the Queen Charlotte Track- Picton

Mountain biking in Wanaka

Snowboarding on Mount Hutt (first day of the ski season and the snow was basically solid ice, but beautiful views from the top of the mountain!)

Abel Tasman National Park

Livin' it up in Hawaii...before moving to the middle of nowhere

Unfortunately we didn't get any really good pictures of either of us actually surfing, probably because we were usually having too much fun to bother with taking pictures.

Jared's big adventure=insanity

You have to look pretty closely to see the small dot

That is the person repelling down this 500 ft. waterfall

Big Island...Lava, Lava, and more Lava!

The black paths are the most recent lava flows where plant life hasn't yet regrown.

The lava took out one of the main roads on the southern part of the island.

This used to be the road...the lava took out most of the road signs but left this one standing.

Sitting on the lava rocks at night to watch the hot lava flowing down the distant hills. You can only see it at night because the lava flows in lava tubes (natural tunnels made by cooling lava) but at night you can see the red flowing where the tubes have cracked or broken down.

Jared and I wanted to get a closer look at the hot lava flowing into the ocean. We had to hike across several miles of old lava to get there. It was a very unique (not to mention hot) experience to be hiking and all you can see is miles of lava in every direction.

We finally made it! We got close enough that we could feel the steam coming from the ground beneath us...we decided that meant we were probably close enough. The lava poured into the ocean creating huge clouds of steam. It was very windy that day so it is hard to see the red lava in the picture because the wind kept blowing the steam clouds to cover it. If you look close you can see a little bit of the red lava flow.

Cooled lava is beautiful! It is an amazing natural art form. You would think that hiking across miles of lava would be boring, but it was suprisingly beautiful scenery.

Trip to the Big Island

MAUNA KEA

Yes....we are still in Hawaii in these pictures even though we are wearing parkas, hats and gloves. We went to the top of Mauna Kea (13, 000 ft) to see some of the world's best observatories and to watch the sun set. It was freezing! It was a beautiful drive to go from sea level up until we were looking down on the clouds. We had to stop about half-way up the mountain to acclamate so we wouldn't get altitude sickness. Once the sun set, we got to do some star gazing which was beautiful and amazing...and very, very cold.

No, this isn't an ocean sunset. This picture is the sun dipping below the clouds from the summit of Mauna Kea.

Volcano National Park: The steam you see in the background is coming from the volcano steam vents, it was hot enough that you could probably cook some food right over the vent. Jared is overlooking the caldera of a old volcano.

Waipio Valley Waterfall (1,200 ft) Sea Arch at southern part of island

Labels: Trip to the Big Island

Meet our cat Oscar

Mostly we like Oscar because he entertains us with his unusual sleeping positions.....it is pretty rare to see him sleep in any normal way.

And he just happens to be extremely cuddly and loves to have his stomach rubbed (which we think is wierd but that is why we like him so much)

Still having fun.....

Our new location on the North Shore makes
us suffer watching amazing sunsets every day

Our glider ride....believe it or we both fit in this tiny plane plus the pilot. Another airplane towed us into the air by rope, then let us go and we glided down watching the shoreline and the mountains as we flew. It was great except for it happened to be an extremely windy day which added plenty of excitement to the ride (and made our pilot a little nervous as we could see him start to sweat). This is one shot of the view as we glided back to ground.

Exploring near our house

Jared's life is very pretty rough right now. The thing he is working the hardest at is growing his beard (and surfing). This might not look like much, but this is 3 months of no shaving for Jared. We hope that his hard work during these last few months in Hawaii doesn't cause a major stress burn-out for him.

Summer Fun

Just a few pictures from some fun summer hikes we did

Kaena point

Playing with a chameleon on the trail

Snorkeling Adventures

Swimming with the dolphins

We went and camped out on the west side of the island one night so that we could join the dolphins that swim by every morning. We just followed this pod and a few other pods of dolphins around for about 30 minutes. We were able to get pretty close!

Jared with the dolphins