Hawaii is the Rainbow State and North Kohala is a great place to see them, given its mix of rain and sunshine. I saw this rainbow as I neared home and was moved to pull over and take photos.
Rainbow over Hawi
Category Archives: Places
Walking with dolphins
Wait a minute, I hear you say, isn’t that supposed to be swimming with dolphins? Usually yes, but in this case, I was walking along the coast when I noticed a splash in the water. Another followed and I quickly recognized the familiar shape and behavior of Spinner Dolphins.
For almost half an hour, I watched as a large pod of dolphins – at least 50 and possibly as many as 100 – cavorted offshore. We were all heading in the same direction and, in normal circumstances, dolphins would easily outpace me, but these were having fun. In addition to spinning, I saw a lot of other regular jumps. Sometimes the dolphins turned back the way they came or headed toward shore, surfing in the waves.
When I turned inland, to head back to my car, they were still in sight and still spinning and frolicking in the waves.
Posted for Jo’s Monday Walk. See more responses here.
Twisting trees
A couple of weeks ago I posted (here) about an old shed on my neighbor’s property. This view is not far from the shed. With the cane grass removed, the twisting trees cast curling shadows on the newly cleared ground.
Cacao tree
I saw this Cacao Tree or Cocoa Tree (Theobroma Cacao) at Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden. I think it’s been there a long time, but this is the first time I’ve noticed it with pods. The pods are the fruit of the tree and if you cut one open, inside you’ll find a cluster of fun-sized candy bars.
Well, maybe not, but you will find an important contributor to those candy bars, cacao seeds or beans, the prime ingredient in chocolate. Each of those seeds, up to 60 per pod, contains a large amount of fat, otherwise known as cocoa butter.
For more information about Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, go to htbg.com.
Bench at Pu’uKohala
This bench at Pu’uKohala looks north to the small boat harbor at Kawaihae and, beyond that towards Maui, obscured here by early morning clouds.
Lava in all its colors
This week’s Sunday Stills Monthly Color Challenge is ‘Lava.’ See more responses here. I don’t often run photos I’ve posted before, but this seemed like an opportune instance to rerun some older photos that are perfect for this theme. I’ve put captions on the photos and a link to the original posts for those interested in checking them out.
Funky chicken
I first saw this chicken on the way to work a couple of weeks ago. It was pecking around at the foot of the hill below where I work. Since this is in one of the Kohala coast resorts, I thought the chicken might be removed with some speed. This hasn’t happened.
Last week, leaving work, I saw it again and stopped to take photos. The chicken immediately headed my way, then stopped, moved away, turned, and came back. I wondered what it was up to.
It wasn’t until I got home and processed the photos that I realized that there was a perfectly reasonably explanation. It was just doing the funky chicken!
Mauna Kea in red
Returning from a recent hike, I drove round a corner and saw Mauna Kea looking completely red in the setting sun. I pulled over and grabbed my camera, but by the time I took photos, a matter of a couple of minutes, only the top half of the volcano was still illuminated.
This though was my last photo from September, posted here for Bushboy’s Last on the Card challenge (see more responses here).
I took the photo with a view to making a few adjustments, which I’ve done in the bottom photo. The main thing was to crop some of the sky, which I had to include in the photo to get the full volcano. The other thing, which is a bit of an oddity with my camera, is that in certain lighting conditions it will produce a somewhat dull and hazy image. But adjusting the Lighten Shadows feature from zero to one makes the difference seen here.
Graham's Island 