Fall Pumpkin Festival in Boston

Summer's over and fall has blown in quickly. Before it got real cold, we took a little trip to see our friends Aaron and Shara in Boston. We took the Chinatown bus on Friday after work. It is definitely the cheapest way to travel! There was a pumpkin festival in Boston Commons Park which was perfect because we love to carve pumpkins. They provided the pumpkins and people just showed up to carve. Unfortunately, most people focused on the quantity of the pumpkins (they were going for 30,000 this year!) instead of doing quality work. So our pumpkins put them to shame as you can see.

Aaron and H in a pumpkin patch. Working hard! Me and H at Harvard.

It was a fun festival. At Boston Common with George. It was a spectacular sight to see all 30,000 pumpkins lit up. I'm not sure who lit them all, but it must have taken a while! Some had Christmas lights in them, but most were lit with little candles.

Kona, Big Island Adventures

Our next stop was Kona, on the other side of Hawaii, the big island. We traveled up to a ranch which claims it produces 39% of all beef consumed in the US, with over 89,000 head of cattle. We didn't see any cattle, but took advantage of the huge expanses of grassland to ride their ATV fleet, which has replaced horses in rounding up cattle, which makes sense. The ATVs can go anywhere. Up and down very steep hills, through mud and sludge. On one hill, the guy in front of me took a corner too fast and the ATV flipped over on top of him. He was okay though. Helaman, Julie, Leroy and I made it out alive and unhurt, although covered with dirt.