Making Waves

Just a couple of wave shots from Ho'okipa Beach I took on Tuesday. 

I may have to head back up to the top of the volcano this weekend. With it being a three day holiday the beaches here will be packed so I will be staying away from those to keep my sanity!

star gazing II

The view through one of these massive telescopes from the top of Haleakala has to be really amazing. 

Closer to sea level...

A couple of random beach pictures I took at the same beach where I got the pictures of the shore birds in a previous post.

star gazing

I went back up to the top of the volcano again last night. I had almost a half moon behind me so I decided to get my version of a selfie while I could.

I should have put a space suit on just to confuse everybody!

Practice makes perfect...

A picture of the local Coast Guard doing a practice beach rescue in Hardy Bay. At first I thought something serious was going on until I realized there were no Police cars or Ambulances involved.

Dinner for two

Back on the mainland my wife and I had a favorite restaurant we went to every Friday night. We got to know the owner/chef and the employees and they have all become very good friends. They are even coming for a visit this winter! I mean, who can turn down a free place to stay In Hawai'i, right?

Since being on Maui we have searched for a place that would give us that same feel as the one we had on the mainland and even though we can't replace our friends, we did find a new Friday night spot.

These two shots are the view from the restaurant, The Kula Lodge. They have a piano player , Francois, and the people and food are both great. Since the restaurant is upcountry (about a third of the way up Haleakala) they even have a wood burning fireplace that they light in the evenings. 

If you are ever upcountry Maui and want a great place to eat with a killer view, The Kula Lodge is the place to go! I highly recommend it.

And if you are thinking it's one of those "swanky" spots that costs and arm and a leg, it can be but it can also be a great casual dinner spot. They have a wood fired pizza oven and so far, it's the best pizza we have had on Maui and you can get a pizza for $22! Yea, it's not a Little Ceaser's $5 pizza but it tastes a lot better and $22 for a pizza is cheap here! 

At lunch they have sandwiches, pasta and pizza and at dinner they have the pizza and pasta along with steaks, prime rib and sea food, not to mention a great bar (and the fireplace).

You can come in and watch the sunset, set by the fire enjoying a cocktail and the piano player and then have a great dinner. What's not to like??

Formation flying...

Found some shorebirds putting on an amazing display of formation flying so I took a few pictures. It's a wonder there were no collisions!
In hindsight I should have taken some video also... Oh well next time.

Just a little too late

I was driving home a couple of days ago and saw this great rainbow in the sky. It was big and bright so I found a place to pull over but by the time I got stopped and set up the rainbow was disappearing.

I ended up with part of a rainbow and a lot of a great big rain cloud. I do like the way the cloud came out though!

Where's Toto?

I'm not in Kansas any more but I I'm finding sunflowers on the island.

They started growing the sunflowers here last year. The flowers were planted by the Maui Bio-diesel company in some of the old sugar cane fields. I'm not sure if they are actually using them for bio-diesel or something else but it does make for a strange site!

I was about a week late getting this shot because the flowers, except for one or two, had lost there color and on their way to drying out.

String of pearls...

No not pearls... More like a close in shot of dew drops on a cobweb and a bit of post processing in Photoshop. Amazing builders those spiders!

More from the "7 Pools"

This is one of the waterfalls coming from one of the pools down into another pool. The day I was there they had the pools closed because of falling rocks and they didn't want any swimmers getting clunked on the head.

It made it great for photos because you didn't have any people you had to try to shoot around. The lighting wasn't great but after driving the winding Hana road for two hours I was going to take some photos!

Stunning eclipse pictures...

  

NOT! 

Northern Vancouver Island was socked right in all morning with fog and when that was done there were more clouds above that. For once the weather forecast for fog and clouds was actually right... Only thing noticeable is it got darkish for about 20 minutes. Oh well there's another solar eclipse in 25 years...

The Seven Sacred Pools

This place has been called the 7 scared pools for decades. The problem is, there aren't seven of them and they aren't sacred.

It seems that the owner of the Hotel Hana, way back when, needed a hook to get people to come all the way to Hana and stay in his hotel so he came up with the name to draw in the tourists. People here on the island now refer to them as the "7 pools" or Ohe'o Gulch, which is where they are located.

The pools are about 10 miles past the town of Hana and are part of the national park system here meaning the federal government is going to charge you $25 per car load of people to enjoy the pools.

This is THE busiest place on the east side of Maui because people come to swim in the pools. The adventurous (or foolish depending on your view) come to jump off the different cliffs into the pools. Some even jump off the bridge you see in this photo into the pool below. You're probably starting to lean towards the description of foolish right about now.

It is a great place to visit but you want to arrive early, very early! I got there about 7:00 a.m. and there were already several people there. By noon this place can be a mad house of people. There is limited parking, enough for about 50 cars, but there are restrooms and a visitors center.

Don't leave anything of value in your car because this place is notorious for break ins.

Cushy!

Mother Natures version of a cushy insole!

Just a ho-hum sunset

That is the island of Lana'i off in the background. Not to be confused with lanai, which is a porch here in Hawai'i. :~)

The sun is setting earlier and earlier every evening. When we first got here in July sunset was around 7:15 p.m. Just over a month later and it's setting around 6;55 p.m. I know that doesn't seem like much but 20 minutes in a month is a lot of light to loose.

I am looking forward to winter here though. No cold, no snow and the whales arrive!

Sunrise out the back door...

Fifty feet from my back door the "Temperate Rain Forrest" begins. This was the scene that greeted me a few days ago as I headed out for the day so I took a few pictures... If you look real close in the bottom middle of this picture you can see the path that leads down to a nearby creek and a favorite place to walk the dogs.

Sunset from 8000 feet above the sea

Once again I headed back up the volcano. This time with my wife so she could learn a little about her camera and shooting sunsets.

These were both taken during the same sunset. The top photo was taken a little earlier and looking off to the left (southwest) and the bottom photo was taken just as the sun went below the tops of the clouds.

Haleakala, the dormant volcano on Maui, is considered to be a sacred place by the Hawaiians and for some reason I continue to find myself drawn to the mountain.

There's a big controversy going on now between the Hawaiians and the federal government because the government, in their infinite wisdom, has decided they need another telescope on top of the volcano and they don't care that it is sacred ground.

There have been protests here, with people laying on the road in front of and under the big trucks hauling the equipment to the top of the mountain and several people have been arrested.

I have to say, I am siding with the Hawaiians on this. They already have telescopes at the top of the volcano and they have several on the Big Island. If they want a new one then why don't they just replace one of the ones that is already there instead of disturbing new ground.

OK, I have put my soap box away for now. 

Just waves

I drove the road to Hana again on Sunday and went about ten miles past Hana where I found a nice point to sit out on. I could have sat there all day watching and photographing the waves but, I got hungry!!

That led me back to the pier at Hana where I found a little restaurant that had some really good fried rice. As much as I hate the road to Hana when it gets busy, I will be going back several times to photograph the many waterfalls along the road. 

If you are thinking about taking the road to Hana during a visit to Maui the trick is to leave as early as you can (before the sun comes up) and go during the week. The locals get to the good pools and waterfalls early on the weekends but it take the tourists a few hours to figure out where they are during the week.

Roadside Fireweed

A bit of roadside Fireweed on my morning commute... For whatever reason this year's Fireweed seems to be a little brighter and blooming longer than usual. Must be part of a larger cycle?

A quick look on the internet would suggest that Fireweed was used traditionally by various groups as medicine and food.

Bridal Veil Falls Near Vancouver.

I love the rain...

I'm a Bald Eagle, I love the rain...
I eat Salmon, I love the rain...
I live in a temperate rain forest, I love the rain...
I'm a national symbol, I love the rain...
I fly effortlessly in the sky, I love the rain...

Who am I kidding, I'd rather be a Duck!

The Hana Pier

The road to Hana is a destination all to it's self. Getting to Hana is all of the fun because you are traveling along the coast and through the rain forest where you can stop and see (and even swim in) several different waterfalls. Tropical plants are abundant as this side of the island gets 400 inches of rain per year.

The water is funneled through natural and man made creeks to be saved and is used as the source of fresh water here on Maui. 

This photo is another one from the pier at Hana. The water here is crystal clear and makes for good snorkeling and swimming since the pier and the bay it is in protects the waters from the high waves most of the year.

End of the road...

... Quatse Lake.

Some Beach...

Some where...

....along the road to Hana. 

Free parking

No need to pay for space at a marina with a boat like this!

Spotted this beauty catamaran at a nearby beach a few days ago. A sailboat this size woud be just right for long distance offshore adventures.

Makaluapuna Point

This is a spot near Kapalua on Maui. There is a great big sign asking people to stay out of and off of this "maze" as it is used by the Hawaiians in cultural practices. There is a scared burial ground near this spot that thankfully most people just walk by because it isn't obvious unless you know it is there.

Unfortunately for the Hawaiians, a lot of the tourists don't seem to care about the culture or protocols and they walk over, through and on this without any respect what so ever.

I had to stand and wait for 30 minutes for people to get out of this so I could take some photos. Parents were letting their little kids kick over the rocks and throw them to different places and when you explain to them that this is a Hawaiian cultural site and they should not be in it, much less letting their kids tear it apart, they just shrug their shoulders and keep doing what they are doing.

This probably isn't very nice of me but...  I was hoping Madame Pele would send down a bolt of lightning or drop a hot rock on some of these people!

 From the internet:  

Pele the Fire Goddess – Pronounced peh-leh or pel-lə – is one of the most well known and revered in Hawaiian mythology. As a sign of respect you may hear her referred to as Madame Pele or Tutu Pele.

She is a goddess of fire, lightning, dance, wind, volcanoes and violence.

 Her poetic name is Ka wahine `ai honua or the woman who devours the land. She is both a creator and destroyer. She throws molten fountains into the air and governs the great flows of lava. With her power over the volcanoes, she created the Hawaiian Islands and to this day, she has been known to reveal herself throughout the beautiful islands she crafted herself.

Busy Bee

This industrious little fellow was moving from flower to flower quicker than I could point and shoot, look at the pollen fly!

The big picture

Paul asked for it so here it is. This is the un-cropped version of Ho'okipa beach I took yesterday morning. It was low tide so the "turtle food" was showing. As the tide comes in this is all covered with water so the turtles can float around and eat.

Just in case you were wondering, the Hawaiian green sea turtles get their green color because this is what they eat.

A wall of water

This is cropped from another photo I took this morning. I really liked the splash so I made it into it's own photo. This is along the beach at Ho'okipa on Maui

Last night's moon

Recent forest fires several hundred miles away in the interior of British Columbia combined with a slow moving warm front has made for quite a bit of hazy smoke lingering high in the atmosphere on Canada's West Coast where I live. This was last night's moon, tonight's moon might be even better...

Once again to the top!

This is a panorama of 8 shots put together to capture the Milky Way on top of Haleakala.

I'm really liking the fact that it's not 30 degrees with 40 mph winds on top of the volcano. Not to mention the fact that the Milky Way is just fantastic up that high!

What a great idea!

Thanks Paul!!

I took Paul's great idea of blending the two previous photos together to get a different look. That still leaves a lot of the foreground in the photo but the mountains are now larger in the photo. Not too much larger but just enough to bring them out a little more.

I may have to give you a commission on this one Paul!

Two Versions

I took two different versions of this photo because I couldn't decided which I like best.

Even though I have looked at them over and over again I still can't decide which one I like best.

These are the mountains in the area they, well, we, call West Maui. If you looked 180 degrees from this spot you would see Lahaina and the ocean.

Looking into Haleakala

This is looking down into Haleakala, the dormant volcano on Maui, from a viewpoint about 1000 feet below the summit.

It's been pretty nice up that high this summer. Normally when I go to the summit it's about 35-40 degrees but this summer the coldest it has been is 52. When I went up during the day to take some more shots it was still 65 degrees at the top. That's great weather for the top of the volcano and it meant I didn't have to put on long pants and a coat.

Being here for just a month has gotten me very accustomed to shorts and sandals. I only own 4 pairs of socks now!