Author Archives: Graham

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About Graham

I take photos when I'm out and about, recording life on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Puna Coast Trail: From the trailhead toward the coast

Last month, I posted photos of colorful lava (here) that I saw on a hike I’d just done. In that post, I noted that ‘I’ll do a post about the trail once I’ve gone through the way-too-many photos I took that day!’ With all that’s been going on in the interim, processing those photos took a long time, but now I’m done. So here’s the first of three posts about the trail, not that you can follow in my footsteps right now because Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is currently closed.

As the name indicates, the Puna Coast Trail travels along the coast of the park, but it starts about a mile inland, across Chain of Craters Road from the Pu’u Loa Petroglyphs trailhead. The trail is 11.3 miles long and ends at Halapē campground, but I only hiked as far as ʻĀpua Point, 6.6 miles along the trail. This rugged trail can be hot, windy, and wet so sturdy shoes or boots, a hat, sunscreen, and raingear are a must. There’s no fresh water on the trail so take plenty, as well as enough to eat.

The trail starts by crossing the 1972 flow from an eruption at Mana Ulu. In the top photo, lava from this flow surrounds a small area of older lava. The ferns growing in the cracks are Polypodium pellucidum, an endemic fern known in Hawaii as ae (pronounced Ah Ay). These ferns are among the first plants to grow in new lava fields. The faint outline of the trail can be seen extending from the middle left of the photo to the cairn on the horizon.

Second photo: An upwelling in an old lava flow has cracked open to reveal a variety of colors within. In the background is Hōlei Pali. A pali is a steep slope or cliff. When a flow goes over a pali, it can often be seen, safely, from a distance away.

Third photo: A trail-marking cairn on a section of older lava that has been somewhat revegetated. The noni (Morinda citrifolia) shrub beside the cairn is another early colonizer of lava flows being tolerant of the harsh conditions found there. Noni is a ‘canoe plant,’ having been introduced to Hawaii by the first Polynesians who arrived in their ocean going canoes.

Fourth photo: Cairns mark the trail across the expanse of lava from the 1971 flow, where very little vegetation can be found. This first part of the trail angles down toward the ocean, which can be seen in the distance.

Below: Colorful smooth pahoehoe lava lies on top of ropey pahoehoe lava, from the same 1971 flow. The kind of lava can change quite quickly as conditions change in the flow itself and the terrain it travels through. This also shows the colors in different layers of lava as well as an ae fern getting a toehold.

Bottom: A little hill of pahoehoe lava showing its different forms all jumbled up. I almost included this photo in the earlier post since its colors, textures, and swirls were unexpected art for me.

Tomorrow, part two follows the hike along the coast itself.

For more information about Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, go to nps.gov/havo/. For more information about the Puna Coast Trail, go to bigislandhikes.com/puna-coast-trail.

Seven-spotted ladybug

The latest Bushboy’s Last on the Card photo challenge is for April 3, 2020. (See challenge rules and more responses here.)

I saw this seven-spotted ladybug on my usual walk along the coast (which is still permitted here). Its bright red elytra jumped out against the largely green background. I’m not sure what the weed in seed was that it was clambering over.

The top photo was the last on my card for that day. The other two were taken earlier in the same encounter and have been cropped and adjusted.

Flowers at Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Fantastic Florals.’ See more offerings here.

This seemed like a good theme to post a few photos, of different colored flowers, from my last visit to Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, back in February.

Top photo: It took me a while to identify this as Petrea volubilis, also known as purple wreath, queen’s wreath, and sandpaper vine, because the long blue parts are actually calices, not petals. The flowers are the smaller darker blue centers most easily seen on the blooms to the left side.

Second Photo: A lavender version of the cattleya maxima orchid was first found in Ecuador in 1777. The yellow stripe down the center of the lip is characteristic of all forms of cattleya maxima, of which this alba variation is one. For more information about the history of cattleya maxima, visit chadwickorchids.com/content/cattleya-maxima.

Third photo: Yellow plume flower (Justicia aurea) is a blaze of color in a sea of green.

Fourth photo: Yes, there are green flowers, including this Anthurium ‘Princess Alexia Jade.’

Bottom: New Guinea Trumpet Vines (Tecomanthe dendrophila) produce a fantastic array of white-tipped pink flowers.

For more information about Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, go to htbg.com.

Orangeband surgeonfish shoal

This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Re-imagine Orange.’ See more responses here.

A shoal of orangeband surgeonfish is fun to see with their orange bands making them easy to identify and follow. For the purpose of this challenge, I took the photo below, desaturated the other colors, then boosted the orange to emphasize their defining feature. These changes virtually eliminated the other fish, particularly the yellow tang which went from bright focal points to almost invisible.

Laupahoehoe Point Beach Park

Laupahoehoe is a small community on the Hamakua Coast, 24 miles northwest of Hilo. The name means ‘leaf of lava’ and refers to the low, wedge-shaped cape of pahoehoe lava which juts into the ocean there. That cape is now the site of Laupahoehoe Point Beach Park, but in its early days, this low point of land was the thriving center of the community, with houses, shops, and a school.

On April 1, 1946, all that changed. In the early hours of the morning, there was an earthquake in the Aelutian Islands of Alaska. I’ve seen various reports of the size of that earthquake from 7.1 to 8.6. Some of these variances are due to differing scales in use. The higher numbers refer to the scale in use today, which is moment magnitude, and which more accurately reflects the energy of large earthquakes.

Regardless of the scale, the earthquake generated a huge tsunami, which roared across the Pacific at speeds up to 500 mph. The tsunami reached the east coast of the Big Island around 5 hours later and came ashore as a sequence of three giant waves. In Hilo, the receding water before the third wave, drained Hilo Bay. Then the largest, 55-foot-high wave, thundered ashore. It destroyed much of the town and killed more than a hundred people.

In Laupahoehoe, the same set of three waves occurred. The first two, somewhat smaller waves drenched people and threw fish out of the water. Students from the school were collecting these fish when the third wave struck. 21 students and three teachers were killed and the top photo shows the memorial plaque bearing their names. Only one of the bodies was recovered. Three students survived after being washed out to sea and drifting along the coast for more than a day. An account of their ordeal can be found here.

After the tsunami, the community was rebuilt up on the cliffs, which can be seen overlooking the park’s boat ramp and breakwater in the bottom photo. The park is now a peaceful spot with palm trees dotting the shoreline and an expanse of grass where kids can run. But if the tsunami siren sounds, this community has learned that there’s only one way to run, and that’s uphill.

A green turtle swims by

Lately, the gloom and doom enveloping the country has been matched by conditions in the water (not that I can access it anymore since all beach parks are closed). A series of swells and high winds has churned things up so that visibility is a hit and miss proposition.

So it was a joy to encounter this small turtle coming directly toward me one day, in a patch of relatively clear water. I took a couple of photos, and this one captured the moment it slid past before easing away into deeper waters.