Hawaii 2004

Aloha!
I wrote this up conversationally, you might want to read it row by row and from left to right.

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A warning to start with: These pictures are entirely unedited and basically raw (though resized down) from the camera.	The camera (Casio Exilim EX-Z30) is new, so I spent most of the vacation figuring out how to take good pictures.	I had a layover in L.A.	Railyards and what L.A. considers a waterway.	Sprawl to infinity.
I tried to get a picture of the terminal. It's much smaller than I thought it would be.	And it's actually just a restaurant.	This is the view from the balcony of our suite.	Also from the balcony, looking to the right. The salt-water pool is visible behind the trees.	We flew into Kona, HI (on the Big Island), where we stayed for a night. In the foreground is an salt-water pool (unmaintained for some reason).
Our room was in the area behind the palm trees.	Dan and Mike didn't want to go beyond the KEEP OUT signs.	CRAB!	Shakey-cam CRAB!	More from the balcony.
Still learning the camera.	Elvis Tiki!	Closer Elvis Tiki!	Our trusty rental SUV.	An ethnobotanical garden. Hawaiians used to harvest older people in hats and Aloha shirts, apparently.
The garden showed the various species of plants which were on the island and what they were used for before Cook landed.	I let Dawn take pictures of the plants. I thought this signage was somehow more important.	We spent 3 more nights on the Big island at this B&B.	The (fresh water) pool. They also had a hot tub.	The common building. We stayed in the building peeking out on the right.
The B&B was right on the shore. This shot is from the end of the pool, as the last one was.	This is proof that digital zoom on cameras is a waste.	The other direction down the shore. It looks overcast here, but it's not.	These are the rocks which your body would be smashed on if you tried to swim here.	The cliff is about 20ft high, I'd guess.
Dried lava. Still at the shore by the B&B.	We went to Volcanoes State Park.	Tree-ferns?!	Before the re-animated dinosaurs could get us, we rushed into a lava tube.	OK, we didn't really rush.
The tube is about 10-15 feet high or so.	And several hundred feet long.	The exit in the distance is for the weak.	I believe that at this point I had the vapors or something.	Still woozy, I see Dawn, Dan, and Mike start to head out.
That exit was for the weak because there was a gate at the exit which let you go into the "unimproved" section of the tube.	It was pretty long and pitch black.	We had flashlights, but they were really dim.	So we went to the point that the floor dropped off a couple feet.	Unable to see much of anything, even with a flash, we turned around.
Luckily, no one was eaten by a grue.	Cool formation at the shore near where you can walk in to see Real Lava (tm).	I can't remember the name of it right now.	When Dan and Heather were last here, this is where they parked.	Well, not at the "No Parking" sign, but in the lot next to it.
There has been some volcanic activity since then.	They had to walk about a mile to see the activity when they were there last.	We had to walk three (and three more to get out).	The whole walk is on this dried, very sharp lava.	That bluff is about 1500 feet high (if I remember right) and slopes quite steeply.
A cool formation. This is only about 10 feet tall.	I missed the fact until I was walking out that there were leis nestled into cracks.	Pele still has her following, apparently.	The plume of steam you see is where the lava is entering the ocean.	It's still about 2 miles away, I'd guess.
We were lucky that it wasn't 100% sunny on this day. If it was, it would have been ungodly hot.	It was pretty warm, but not unbearable.	More on heat later.	Dawn is walking along a rope which marks off the area where you might die instantly. If you were to enter it.	I promised Heather I would delete this picture. I just haven't gotten to it yet.
You thought I was joking about where Dawn was walking, didn't you?	It was very tempting to take a picture of the back of this sign.	Dawn and Mike prove the crappiness of digital zoom.	I'll take this time to mention again that the rocks very, very sharp.	One wrong step and you would savage your ankle.
Figuring out the scale of things is a common problem in Hawaii.	I'm up on the high part, which I'd guess is 100 feet from the plateau below.	You can barely make out the steam plume to the left of center. Only a little further now.	And there it is.	A... few... more... steps...
You can't tell, but I'm up on a bluff like you saw in the previous picture. If you look closely you can see orange just left of center.	The lava is a bit clearer here.	The steam contains sulferic acid, hydrochloric acid...	...and "glass shards" The white blotches here is vapor coming from the ground at my feet.	Walking over the vaporous rocks, which were obviously much hotter than their neighbors, we could see the lava better.
Again, this is further away than it looks.	Bit of read-hot magma there.	You know the acids I can deal with, but glass shards?!	Neverending proof of the inadequacy of digital zoom.	I'm hoping Dawn's and Dan's pictures come out better.
The Big Island is slowly getting bigger.	Finally on the way back.	It seemed like the blackened scorched earth was unreal here. It looked like a matte painting from a movie.	Leaving the glass shard emitter (still visible in the distance).	Glass shards. In my lungs. What kind of moron am I?
I thought the contrasty relief was pretty cool.	It was getting pretty late.	We had shown up expecting a mile or two hike, not a six mile hike.	We got back about half an hour before dark. It gets dark very fast in Hawaii.	This is daybreak at the B&B.
The B&B was on the Southeast shore.	Sweet	The B&B is near Keaau, a bit south of Hilo.	Sunrise at the shore.	Why am I up this early?
Oh yeah, 2 hour time difference.	Once again, the common area and the pool.	Trust me, it's the last picture of this pool.	The voice of the DRUM...	...is the spirit...
...of a land...	...and of its people...	...as they pass through the legends of time...	...to reach the ultimate reality...	...that SCIENCE,...
...NATURE,...	...and the SOULS of ALL of MANKIND...	...are ONE.	...IT'S ALL GOD.	Or so it's written here.
Our rooms at the B&B.	They had a little garden with a tiki in it.	I proceeded to fumble incompetently with the camera.	I kind of like this tiki.	Not too scary, not too cute.
Say cheese!	Once more for insurance.	We went to see some waterfalls whose names I don't remember. This was a cool tree I saw there.	This is more indicative of the weather. Many other pictures show the sky as white since it's so bright out.	Mmmm pretty.
Alien life form.	Hard to see this waterfall well through the foliage.	It goes down below the frame here.	A closeup. I know you're impressed.	Another.
My god, when will it end?	This waterfall was much cooler.	This isn't the Fantasy Island waterfall, but it reminds me of it in this shot.	The Fantasy Island waterfall is on a different island.	Maybe if I zoom in, it'll seem bigger.
Mike's says that he's smiling weakly because he's so hot.	Mike is so hot!	Still at the waterfall. I thought the trees on the hill were cool.	So cool, that I took more pictures of them.	A long shot of the Muana Kea Observatory.
I'll get back to that later.	After the waterfalls, we went to a tropical garden.	They had a palm tree area.	I like the way they make a big roof overhead.	Shakey-cam SPIDER!
SPIDER! About 2.5 inches tip of leg to tip of leg.	There were some nice waterfalls.	Which I used to try out some camera settings.	Trying to "freeze" the water.	And failing.
I'll move on soon.	Really, I'm moving on.	Dawn must have taken 10,000 pictures in here of the various alien life-forms.	These were weird. They felt basically like plastic, and are about as long as my hand.	Dawn found a geko lounging about inside them.
Miniture pineapples. This whole plant would cut you to ribbons if given half a chance.	Invasion pods.	The garden went down to the ocean.	As always the waves crashing on the rocks.	"The ship's aground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle"
The water is so clear and warm, too.	Dawn and Heather finally escaped the lure of the Orchid garden.	Nifty spiral palm	We couldn't find any of this moonshine in the stores.	Ku and his acolyte.
Ku is the tiki of wisdom, strength, and courage in competition.	See, I told you.	Dead center: a great big frog.	Blurry bird in a cage.	These looked like big rows of firecrackers. They weren't.
We travelled from sea level up, up, up...	...to Muana Kea and it observatories.	This funny bird is at the vistor's center at around 10,000 ft.	From the visitor's center looking down at the clouds and the rest of the island to the sea.	Invisible Cows. You're supposed to acclimatize at 10,000 ft for half an hour before going the rest of the way up.
Another view of the island from on high.	I don't think that's the top, I think the top is behind it. The buildings are scientist housing.	At the observatories at 13,500 ft or so. This is the shadow of Mauna Kea onto the clouds.	The air is very clear, mainly because there isn't much.	We got there just before sunset.
It was also pretty cold.	Yes, that is snow.	The summit of Mauna Kea, about 200 yds (and some feet up) away.	The observatory is opening up.	The sun is dropping, we better get to the summit.
We got to the summit maybe 2 minutes before the sun started to set.	I took a bunch of pictures of the sunset.	Hoping that one or two would come out.	Crazy lens flare.	More sunset.
And more.	I think the best one is probably the first one I took.	USGS Benchmark: 13,796 ft.	They throw you off the summit after sundown so they can do work.	We went back to the visitor's center.
They had some telescopes and did some stargazing.	The next day: What the hell is Civil Defense doing here?	Tsunami!	When these go off, you are to RUN inland as fast as possible.	Of course, this location was on a 3 mile plateau at 20 ft above sea level. I don't think running would save you.
On our way to the "Garden Island" Kauai for the next 3 nights.	There's a Pittsburg Steelers logo on the tail. Why?	We had a brief stop in Honolulu.	Honolulu is on Oahu.	I was lucky and was on the right side of the plane.
I got some nice pictures.	75% of Hawaii's population is on Oahu.	I was on the wrong side of the plane for the landing. Only ocean.	We landed in Lihue and stayed in Waimea.	Waimea is on the south coast and is about an hour away from Lihue.
Kauai has the wettest spot on Earth, getting 450 inches a rain a year on average.	The expect 600 inches of rain this year.	All that rain means a lot of runoff.	So there are these huge canyons on the island.	Waimea canyon is the big one.
There's a number of scenic overlooks on the road which winds around it.	Regrettably, just out of this shot was a Coke bottle. No one will ever be able to get it because of the sheer cliff.	Grand Canyon of the Pacific	These pics could be made into a panorama if I had the program which does that.	A goat would have a hard time on those ridges.
A bit hazy out.	Again, it's very tough to figure out the scale here. It's big. And deep.	The sun burned through some.	The haze kept the heat under control, though.	This overlook was really cool. The canyon breaks into the ocean.
Wow.	Looking more to the right now.	The clouds are below us and at our height.	Some waterfalls off in the distance.	That's the ocean off to the left.
The sun's coming over the falls now.	Still.	And again.	It's digital, take as many as you want!	A little further up again, at the top actually. That's a National Guard and NASA installation on the left.
The impressive view is fogged in.	This is off to the right.	It was pretty windy, but the fog kept roiling up.	It's thick too. This is a vertical drop off.	Even the sun can't cut through it.
Nice day, except in the direction we wanted to look.	Undulating trail erosion.	Dan with his retro "film" camera.	Nice hat.	The view the opposite direction from the fog.
Dawn on the edge of the fog bank.	The one thing I wanted to do was go to a classic Hawaiian luau. We went to Smith's, which has been doing them for 50 years.	An albino peacock	Smith's Tropical Paradise is right out of the late 50s.	It's got the same feel that Lake George has.
The gardens were pretty pedestrian compared to the stuff we had seen before.	Adirondack Chair In Tropical Paradise	The theater where the show will be held later on.	Almost sundown again.	Sundown in the Tropical Paradise
But wait! I hear the call!	It's time for the Imu ceremony.	The Imu is the basically an underground oven made with lava rocks.	They heat the rocks up with fire. Then they cook the food with the hot rocks.	You need to use lava rocks since they don't explode when heated.
Pig and pudding are cooked in the imu.	Boys in loud skirts disinter our food.	Pig retrieved	Huzzah	Vegetarians can have the 3 bean salad and poi.
Dinner was all-you-can drink and eat. Live cocktail music by Steve and Eyde's Hawaiian clones.	Poi is a gray-purple paste that tastes like nothing.	After dinner, off to the evening show.	We bought the festive leis.	Happy luau patrons
Pele's volcano erupts.	And she tells us how she kicks butt.	Hula	This dance was around two sticks being constantly clacked together in an attempt to savage your ankles.	Poi. The burning kind.
Wooo.	Spinny.	These signals called the aliens down to the Tropical Paradise for a Mai Tai.	This man did not set himself on fire.	It's rather like NASCAR:
You don't want him to burst into flames...	...but the possibility that he might...	...makes it exciting.	This is where we ate dinner earlier.	The next day: We always need more stamps! Heather waits for the post office to open.
We went up the Na Pali coast in this boat.	Na Pali = the cliffs. The only was to see na pali is to go by boat or helicopter.	That little disturbance is a dolphin.	Later on, there were a score of dolphins by the boat.	The Waimea Canyon
The water is around 78 degrees.	Not sharks. Dolphins.	The dolphins cavorted and were doing spins and flips. They were very, very cool.	They were chasing malolo, which are flying fish.	More of the canyon.
We actually saw the flying fish a couple times. Highly improbable animals.	Although the peak of Kauai gets 450 inches of rain, the coast here only gets 20ish inches.	So, this wall of clouds and rain is unusual.	This beach is the Pacific Missile Range. On the left, you see the weather which makes the very photogenic coast invisible.	It cleared up enough for us to see, though.
I thought the fog and clouds made these cliffs look rather like chinese prints I've seen.	The rain was colder than the water, which was very warm.	A little further on, it cleared up more and we got out and snorkeled for a while.	We swam with undermined fish and sea turtles.	Again, scale is confusing. That peak is around 3,000ft.
The hole in front of the waterfall maybe 50 ft high.	Another waterfall.	We cruised on back from the coast, and Dawn and Heather got massages while the guys did pretty much nothing.	On Kauai, we got stuck with a minivan because reserving a car at a rental agency doesn't mean you actually have a car reserved.	We stayed in this building at Waimea Plantation Cottages.
It's rather like Camp in some ways.	There were some mosquitoes, too.	It's a bit warmer, though.	And it's also only 50 yds from the beach.	A black sand beach with hammocks.
Another cottage. ADK chairs are apparently de rigeur.	Inland from the beach.	Look! Another chair!	The beach at the plantation is not for swimming, though.	There's bad riptides.
And a rapid drop-off and other nasty stuff.	But walking on the beach...	...and playing in the surf is really nice.	My god. Chickens everywhere. Loud, obnoxious chickens. If you want to sleep, BRING EARPLUGS.	The main office of Waimea Plantation Cottages.
Lobby	Veranda/meeting room. Like many places in Hawaii (like the airports), it's open-air.	The ocean is in the distance, our cottage is off the frame to the left.	This is our last day and I realized a had more space in the camera. So, some random pictures.	Well, I started with prehistoric tree-ferns. Now here's the post-industrial power-tree.
They grow best by the side of the road.	Dan was our chauffer the whole time.	Dan hates the american cars that the rental agencies provide.	Almost the happy car. Of course, these pictures are being taken while the car is in motion.	The happy car.
I think this is the winner, if I rebalance the brightness and crop it.	Shave ice (NOT "shaved ice") is tasty!	Jo-jo's Shave ice had like 60 different flavors.	Spouting Horn is a small lava tube which water shoots out of.	Assuming, of course, that the water hits the shore well.
It seemed rather unpredictable.	And I was about to give up, when...	Thar she blows!	SAVAGE shrimp was very good. We got a "plate lunch", a local standard. It's two scoops of rice, some other side (cabbage in this case) and the entree (shrimp). A lot of food.	Just driving to the airport when... BOING!
We spotted this huge rainbow!	I wasn't supposed to trespass beyond the yellow fence.	But I didn't want it in my shot.	The rainbow was very wide in my experience.	Where is the rain coming from?
This is some kind of famed tree tunnel.	It didn't really rock my world.	But hey, trees are good.	Spongebob raises his arms in victory over Burger King. He so pwns BK.	First Class passengers get to dress up. Aloha!

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