‘photography’ Category

Hawai’i Trip, Part 3

Further adjusting to the time change, we were able to sleep until 4:30am on Sunday morning. We had a morning snorkel planned aboard the Fair Wind II, so we watched some TV, read our books, and relaxed until it was time to head to the boat at around 8:30am. The Fair Wind II is a large catamaran that usually holds 150 people. Only 50 people had signed up for that morning (due to slowing economy and off-season, they said) so we had plenty of space. We were able to secure two of the four chaise lounges on the top deck of the boat. The boat took us to Kealakekua Bay, an underwater state park, marine sanctuary, and site of the Captain Cook Monument, known as one of the better snorkeling sites in Hawaii.

Snorkeling near Captain Cook Monument

During the morning sail to the Bay, we were fed a light breakfast (tea, juice, muffins, danishes, and fruit) and watched the coast go by. This morning the ocean had some pretty heavy southern swells coming into the coast so there were some amazing views of the swells breaking against the coast into huge sprays. It looked almost like fireworks as the water exploded up and outwards.

Ocean swells breaking along the coast

Kealakekua Bay is surrounded by sheer cliffs and the water felt great. While the snorkeling was very good, we think Molokini crater near Maui was more beautiful with a greater variety of coral and fishes. At Kealakekua there were a lot of interesting sea urchins and various other sea creatures stuck to the coral, but you had to look pretty carefully or dive down to get a closer look.

After a BBQ lunch on the boat and a little more snorkeling, it was time to head back home. We headed back to the condo, showered, and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. After all, this is vacation! We drove to Kailua-Kona for some dinner at The Fish Hopper and walked around the shopping area. The shops are surprisingly interesting and fun to browse, not as full of tourist trinkets as other islands we’ve been to.

Hawai’i Trip, Part 2

The island of Hawai’i (also known as the Big Island) is pretty darned big — who would have known? It takes around 6 or 7 hours to drive the loop around the entire island. The island also has very different characteristics in different areas: hot, dry, and barren on the west coast, lush rainforest on the east, and snow-capped peaks in the middle. We are staying on the west coast — the Kona coast — where it rarely rains, and vast fields of black lava rock make up the landscape. Most of it doesn’t look like what you’d expect of Hawai’i.

Map of Hawai’i

Not a big surprise, but we woke up very early Saturday (3:00am early), due to the 6-hour time difference between Hawai’i and Virginia. After trying to sleep some more, then reading books for a while, we gave up and decided to make the best of things and get an early start to the day. We headed to the nearby town of Kailua-Kona and enjoyed a very good breakfast at Island Lava Java.

Kathie checking out the beach after breakfast

We decided to drive to Hilo on the other side of the island, via the northern route, and see some sights along the way. So by 7:30am we were heading North on the Māmalahoa Highway, and continued on, climbing steadily in altitude, until we reached the town of Waimea. There, we decided to take a detour and turned onto Kohala Mountain Road, a steep winding road that took us up to around 3,500 feet and a view of the western coastline.

On the advice of some locals who were also at the overlook, we continued on our detour to the northern tip of the island, and to another overlook, this time above the Pololū Valley. After admiring the view, we decided to attempt the hike down the 420-foot cliff face to the black sand beach, knowing that the hike back up would be an even greater challenge. There’s a zig-zag path cut into the side of the cliff which makes the hike manageable for us amateurs, but I was still impressed that we made it (mostly, that we made it back up). Think about climbing to the top of a 42-story building… in the hot tropical sun… on a steep rock and dirt trail. At the bottom, we got to check out the very fine black sand, and watch a few locals surfing, swimming, and fishing at the beach. Back at the top, we gulped down our water, turned the air conditioning on full-speed in the car, and retraced our route back to the beginning of our several-hour-long detour.

After hiking down to the black sand beach

Shortly after turning East again, we crossed over to the rainy side of the island — rainy means it gets 130 inches of rain per year — and the Hāmākua coast. Because of the rain, everything grows huge and dense here. Our next detour took us to Waipi’o Valley Overlook, which was so similar to the Pololū Valley Overlook that for a few minutes we thought we were looking at the same valley from the opposite side. Luckily no downward trail for us to hike down this time. There is a meandering drive one can take to the bottom of Waipi’o Valley but only with a 4×4. This valley was once (13th through 17th century) the center of Hawaiian life, with 20,000 Hawaiians living here.

Looking out over Waipi’o Valley

Our next stop on the journey to Hilo was Laupāhoehoe Point Park. This local watering hole was full of kids swimming and diving off rocks. The waves crashing on the rocks were sending up giant plumes of ocean spray, and Kathie was thoroughly enjoying sitting on the pier and watching the show.

Watching the waves at Laupāhoehoe Point Park

We were quite hungry by now (no doubt due to the strenuous hike earlier in the morning, and the many hours since breakfast), but decided to make one more stop on the way to Hilo. This time we drove to ‘Akaka Falls State Park, where a 10-minute walk on a paved trail took us into the rainforest to witness two giant (over 400-foot high) waterfalls: ‘Akaka falls and Kahuna falls. Kahuna falls was further away from the trail and cut into the mountain surrounded by trees, so it almost looked like a very fast waterslide. ‘Akaka falls into a large basin so it’s very open and visible. The water falls so far that much of it turns into mists and fine sprays.

‘Akaka falls

Finally exhausted and hungry, we pressed on until reaching the city of Hilo around 3pm. Hilo is considered less touristy and more “Hawaiian” than Kona. Most of the locals live on the Hilo side and commute to Kona. We stopped on the main drag and grabbed some food from Café Pesto. After feeling refreshed and ready to see more sites, we walked towards the Big Island Visitor’s Bureau. Unfortunately it was closed on the weekends so we decided to walk around further and see some of the shops. Shortly after walking around we realized something very odd: many of the museums and shops were either closed on Saturdays or closed early on Saturdays so we were unable to actually visit many of the sites. Since we were tired and still had a 2 ½ hour drive back to the hotel, we decided to call it a day.

Blog: Smashing Magazine

I don’t intend for my blog to turn into a review of other blogs, but this one I just have to mention. I recently came across the Smashing Magazine “blog” while looking for some help with web design. The site has an incredible depth of information on web site design — an area where I feel woefully inadequate, but desperately wish I was better at. However, it also has lots of other interesting articles that set it apart. Here’s a smattering of ones I’ve found interesting so far, but there are hundreds of similar articles on the site:

• 35 Beautiful Music Album Covers
• (Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos
• 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design
• Top 10 CSS Table Designs
• Framewords Round-Up: When To Use, How To Choose?
• 55 Free High Quality Icon Sets

Enjoy!

Spring is here

Last week we had some beautiful weather, and the cherry trees along our driveway bloomed more fully than in the past few years. I took the opportunity to take a couple photos… just in time, it turns out, since two days later, half the blossoms have already fallen, and the trees are half green, half pink now.

Snow & Neighbors

We had a pretty decent snowfall today… a few inches of really enormous snow flakes. Kathie and I had to take Max to the vet in the early afternoon, and when we got back we were shocked to see our driveway was completely cleared (via a snow thrower)! We parked, looked around, and saw our neighbor across the street (Brian) shoveling his walkway and asked him about it. As it turns out, after clearing his own driveway with his snow thrower, he made his way down the street and did 7 other drives! Our driveways aren’t exactly small either. What a nice surprise and nice gesture!! We usually subscribe to the “it will get warmer and melt eventually” method of driveway clearing.

The hawthorn trees at the end of our driveway looked very pretty with their red berries standing out against the white snow. I grabbed the camera to get some photos, but it was already raining pretty steadily so I only spent about 20 seconds on the attempt: