The company has put my coworker and I up in a rental property while we work the Big Island.  It’s a nice place 20 minutes or so from Hilo.  There’s an ocean view, but I can’t take a good picture right now with the sunrise.

We are just two little blocks from the ocean.  But the coast is not exactly “beach-like” on this corner of the island.  Sharp basalt boulders don’t mix well with waves and human bodies, so I shall swim elsewhere.

Being on the rain forest side means it’s usually raining by mid afternoon.  But it also means the forest is lush with all kinds of vegetation I can’t even begin to identify, save for the ones with fruit I recognize.  Coconut palms are everywhere and there’s even a new one growing from its over-sized seed on the edge of the yard.  This picture also has bamboo and a young banana tree in it so I guess I know more than I thought.

I mentioned a tropical storm in my last post.  Hilda fizzled into a non-event, as predicted, producing only some nuisance rain as far as I was concerned.  I took it in stride and went to the movies while Hilda’s remnants staggered ashore.

So long Alaska, hello Hawaii.  Or “aloha”, I suppose.

Yes, it seems my whirlwind of cool places has brought me to The Big Island out here in Hawaii.   It’s the same old job on the work end, but the severe change in latitude and longitude has taken me from the subtropical evergreen forests of southeast Alaska to an actual rain forest on the southeast end of the Big Island.

Already I have seen some of the stark contrasts this island has to offer.  The thick vegetation of the jungle sudden breaks into the cracked and crumpled starkness of a basalt lava flow younger than myself.

This moonscape is in turn broken by the brilliant azure of the Pacific Ocean where 10 foot waves thunder into the jagged shore.

The house I am staying in for the next month has no A/C so the open windows let in the chorus of insects and the invasive Coqui Frog.  Though the frogs are considered a nuisance by local standards, I find the calls soothing when combined with the drone of a fan.  Just like a warm spring night in northern Wisconsin.

Hawaii does have a lot of problems with invasive species, however, and I’ll probably touch on that some more in the future.

Meanwhile, I should mention that there is this weak hurricane slowly making its way toward Hawaii.

But by the time Hilda brushes up against this island it will barely be able to muster the title of “Tropical Storm”; if that.  There’s a lot of upper-level wind shear that will smack it down in the next two days and it will only be a gusty rain event when it gets here.  It has produced some cool surf on this side of the island.  Expect some more content related to this little weather event in the next few days.

Today my travels took me to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array along US 60 in western New Mexico.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array

The collection of 27 dishes pick up signals on the electromagnetic spectrum from distant objects in the universe like black holes and supernovae and every other awesomely cool phenomena waiting for its own episode of Star Trek.  (C’mon, CBS; get on that!)

They can move the antennae around with these sets of double railroad tracks, one of which crosses the highway.

We’ve been driving past this facility periodically for over a month and finally had the time to visit the actual visitor’s center today.

There’s some cool stuff there especially if you’re into science and astronomy.  You look around at all these gargantuan machines probing into the far corners of known space and it makes you feel better about our species.  Here we have a sizable investment of resources devoted to the advancement of human knowledge.  The 27 dishes combining their efforts to effectively create a single antenna miles and miles across is an uplifting metaphor for what people can accomplish when we try.

I definitely picked up some swag at the gift shop.  I wish I had more time to hang out at the VLA, but this time of year, we’ve gotta take advantage of high sun to do our job.  We’ve got our own science data to collect.

Here’s a few cool shots from the last few days around the Gila Mountains near Silver City.

Saw a few of these spiny lizards scooting around.  I’ve got pictures of bigger ones, but this little guy is so nicely camouflaged it’s a way cooler shot.

The flooding is still lingering in a few spots.  We’ll have to come back to this spot later outside of Glenwood where Whitewater Creek is doing it’s best to obliterate this road.

Many of the campgrounds in the area were out of commission like this one in Kingston on the east slope of the mountains.  Check out that picnic table.

It’s easily the coolest area of NM I’ve been to so far.  I just wish I could’ve got some fishing in, but with all the recent flooding, it would’ve been really tough.  I’ll be back though, but next time we’ll try and stay at hotel where the wifi doesn’t suck so I can get more frequent updates.

(reporting from I-25 exit 191)