For a year now, we’ve all been dealing with the Covid pandemic. This deadly virus has affected almost all of our activities – work, school, travel, shopping – just about everything.

To combat this disease, we’ve been asked to change our habits. As a result businesses had to drastically change their operations or close altogether to comply with government mandated health rules.

Being involved with restaurants, I’ve watched closely as the food service industry has responded to forced dining limits or closures. In many localities, on-premise dining was prohibited so many restaurants started or increased take-out and/or delivery service. Some places allowed outdoor patio dining as long as the establishment’s seating arrangement allowed for social distancing.

As the weather turned colder, the popularity of outdoor dining dropped so restauranteurs looked for other ways to keep customers coming back.

Below you can see some of the clever ways that are used to keep winter outdoor dining safe and warmer.

The least enjoyable part of the trip is getting there. It’s an all day affair starting with a short hop from our home in Grand Rapids to Chicago followed by a very long, 9-hour flight from Chicago to Honolulu.

Clouds covered most of the flight path to the islands. These sparkling beaches of Oahu (to the right) are about the only sites that we see along the way and this only upon leaving Honolulu on a 45 minute connecting flight to Kona.

And owing to a six hour time difference, we arrive in time for dinner.

Being in the middle of the Pacific, there’s water galore everywhere. The next morning, with our snorkeling gear in tow we head down to one of the local beaches.

For this trip, I’ve taken a camera that can be used underwater. I’ve never invested the thousands of dollars needed for a “real” underwater outfit, but this Olympus Tough 6000 will do the trick.

The Big Island is surrounded by shallow reefs lined with coral. Many of the popular beaches attract bathers for this exact reason. The coral is teeming with tropical fish and wildlife just a few feet below the water’s surface.

Without heavy scuba equipment and expensive deep water photo gear, my small, relatively inexpensive camera makes it possible for me to record these amazing wonders of the ocean. Here’s some of my “catch” made simply by gently kicking my flippers, goggles and snorkel facing downward and camera in hand.