Category Archives: Places

Signs: Arrow World

Recently, the highway department carried out some improvements on Kohala Mountain Road. The road is narrow and winding, though very scenic, and there are often accidents. The latest improvements added more guard rails and more yellow and black arrow signs to let drivers know they’re approaching a corner. I had a couple of observations about the work.

The guard rails are probably not a bad idea since anyone running wide at these places would be looking at diving into a gully or plunging down a steep hill. On the other hand, there’s virtually no shoulder where the new rails are and, in some places, none at all. So now, a moment’s inattention is likely to send a vehicle banging into the rail and bouncing back into oncoming traffic. We’ll see how that shakes out.

What made the biggest impression on me though were the new corner signs. They’re bigger than the old ones – all the better to see them then. But as I mentioned, it’s a winding road, so for about three miles there’s now a never ending sequence of these signs, pointing one way, then the other, then back again. While this is visually striking during the day, at night the effect is dramatic. The signs are, of course, reflective and impressively so, especially as they’re new. Driving along as the large signs flash up and past is like a carnival ride and I’m starting to hear calliope music as I pass. I just hope it’s not of those sinister rides where you wonder whether you’ll make it to the end alive.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s bat plant

Bat plant is the common name for Tacca nivea, a tropical evergreen from Malaysia. The name comes from its appearance. Large white petals stand above dark flowers and long bracts and together these make it look like a bat face.

In this photo the two petals are not standing up, but are lying on top of the flowers so the look is different, but still striking. I’ll have to go back again at a different time to catch it with standing petals.

This one was at Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. For more information about Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, go to htbg.com.

Sugar cane

North Kohala was a significant center for Hawaii’s sugar industry through the boom years in the 1800s until its decline in the first half of the 20th century. Now, sugar cane is being put to a new use in the area – rum production.

The photos show sugar cane being grown in the fields below Hawi wind farm. This isn’t just any kind of sugar cane. These are heirloom varieties, derived from canoe plants – plants brought to Hawaii by the original Polynesian settlers. Now they’re being used in the production of rum agricole.

Rum agricole hails from the Caribbean, particularly the island of Martinique. Regular rum is made from molasses, but rum agricole uses fresh sugarcane juice. The people behind Kuleana Rum have begun producing the Caribbean-style rum here on the Big Island. They have a distillery in Kawaihae, about 17 miles down the coast, and have opened Kuleana Rum Shack, a bar and restaurant in Waikoloa.

For more information about Kuleana Rum, go to kuleanarum.com. Posted in response to this week’s Sunday Stills challenge on the theme of ‘Spirit.’ See more offerings here.

Medivac plane at Upolu

One quirk of living in Hawaii is that it’s not unusual for people to have to fly for medical treatment. There aren’t a lot of specialists on the Big Island. Typically, they’ll visit once or twice a month. But the bigger issue is that expensive pieces of medical equipment are mostly on Oahu. Need an MRI? You might have to go to Honolulu.

For scheduled appointments, people generally take commercial flights, but some conditions, and most medical emergencies, require a medivac flight.

Upolu Airport, which is basically a runway with few facilities, is used by these medivac aircraft on a regular, if not frequent basis. These photos are of one such plane awaiting a patient, then heading down the runway and into the air, bound for Honolulu.

Lava trees

Lava Tree State Monument is in the southeast part of the island, within half a mile of the edge of last year’s flow. As the name suggests, it has some good examples of lava trees.

Lava trees are formed when molten lava coats a tree, burning the wood, and leaving just the cooling lava shell that surrounded it. There are two ways this can happen. One is when a flow surrounds the trees and then drains away. The other way is for falling lava to cover and burn the trees.

The lava trees in Lava Tree State Monument were formed by the first of these two methods. A lava flow in 1790, as high as 11 feet, surrounded ohia trees in this part of the island, and burned the wood away. When new fissures opened soon after, the lava in this flow drained back underground, but the lava immediately surrounding the trees had cooled enough that it was already hardening, so it remained, retaining each tree’s shape in its center.

The photos show lava trees in the park, a closer view of one showing the hollow center, and a view of the hollow core where new plant life is taking hold. In some cases, this new plant life is new trees growing out of the old, hollow lava trees.

For more information about Lava Tree State Monument, go to https://hawaiistateparks.org/parks/hawaii/lava-tree-state-monument/.