After we drove up to Kokee State Park, which some of you may remember, it was another 45 minute drive on a 4 wheel drive dirt road. Wendy made sure to hit as many ruts and potholes as possible to keep me shaken yet stirred. We were really out in the boonies.
Here we are at the trailhead. The start of the trail is a 10 minute climb up a 75 degree muddy incline. I had my Camelback with a few snacks that weighed about 5 pounds. Wendy had her work pack that probably weighed 20-25 pounds. She insisted on carrying her own pack, I swear! (Hey, I'm not supposed to do her job for her.)
Here Wendy tries to teach me something about compound leaves.
It was an hour and a half just to get to our destination. A lot of snaking along, with several parts that could be shortened by straightening the trail. But I guess that would take away from the accomplishment.
Lunch break. Spam musubis and Korean style chicken. Mmmmmm.
This is the Circle Bog. Funny finding bogs and swamps at 4000+ feet elevations. Only in Hawaii. Where's Wendy?
This is why we came here. This is a rare, endangered plant. There were only 4 of these in the bog. The plant Wendy is examining is flowering, so she came up here to pollinate it. In other words, Wendy is manually stimulating the plant's sex organs. Who would have though that botany could be so... savage!
On the way out, Wendy did some clean up. The hike back wasn't so bad, but the steep downhill took its toll on my thighs. I've been walking funny since.
When we got back to civilization, our cellphones went off. I had a feeling that we would receive an update on our short sale offer right when both of us would be out of contact for the whole day. I was right. We both received messages from our realtor.
Bank of America finally responded. We made our offer back in the beginning of February. Took over 3 months. Wendy thinks it's a ridiculous amount of time to have to wait, and I agree. However, for BoA, that's actually a decent response time. I've read stories where they've taking 8-20 months in some cases.
Anyway, BoA submitted a counter offer. Their counter is within the price range we were expecting, so we're happy with it. We did get conditional approval for a mortgage in the amount we originally offered, so on Monday we're going to go talk to our banker again and rework the numbers. We'll also start scheduling inspectors this week. If all goes well, we should be home owners in July.
Wow! Did Wendy approve this blog? ha ha
ReplyDeleteCongrats on possible near future homeownership!
I let Wendy read everything I post. However, since she refuses to do any of the writing, she cannot censor me. Whenever I post something and she says, "I can't believe you wrote that," or, "you have to change that," I tell her she can write her own version. :)
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