
This week’s Sunday Stills monthly challenge is ‘Green.’ See more responses here. Captions on photos.






This week’s Sunday Stills monthly challenge is ‘Green.’ See more responses here. Captions on photos.






Hawaii Island Retreat sits on a steep cliff on the windswept North Kohala coast. There are a couple of public access trails leading down to the coast there. One passes in front of the main building and this is where this swing can be found.
I think I could be happy rocking back and forth there for an hour or two or three, and disembark a more balanced and contented individual!
For more information about Hawaii Island Retreat, go to hawaiiislandretreat.com.

The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 132.
You can see more responses here.






… They go together in this week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme of ‘Rainy Days.’ See more responses here.

There’s plenty of rain on the Big Island. Most falls on the wet east side, but the dry west side can get its share too. Hilo, on the wet side, averages around 140 inches of rain a year, and just to the west of Hilo is an area that gets more than 200 inches a year. In contrast, Kawaihae, on the Kohala coast, gets around 10 inches of rain annually, though I suspect last year was one of its wetter ones.

Where I live, on the northern end of the island, we get around 50 inches of rain a year, but being on the shoulder of Kohala Mountain, that figure can change quickly going a mile east or west, or a mile up the hill or down toward the ocean.



I was driving home yesterday when I noticed some haze blowing out to sea. I thought it was rain at first, but quickly realized that this was smoke, likely another brush fire, and my heart sank. I was halfway home. Up ahead was Lapakahi and beyond that, Mahukona, two places I spend a lot of time at.
As I got closer I saw that the fire was burning at Lapakahi. Traffic was still passing on the highway though the land beside it was black and smoking. But strong trade winds had blown the fire, which apparently started near the park entrance, down towards the ocean.

My guess is the fire had been going less than an hour when I got there, though a considerable area had already burned. Fires were burning along the north edge of the area, not far from the road, but the most smoke and bigger flames could be seen closer to the ocean. It looked like the small visitor center had escaped, surrounded as it is by the looping access road. But other structures might not have been so lucky, and the native plants, birds and insects probably did not fare well.




This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Fun with Photo Editing.’ See more responses here.
I don’t tend to monkey around with photos much, outside the usual cropping, and adjusting color and the like. Still, I had several ideas for this challenge, none of which I liked when push came to shove.
Instead, I settled for these photos, a day and night view of the excellent KO Pizza food truck. The truck operates two days a week in Hawi, but they’re in the process of opening a permanent location in town. Menu planning is about to get much easier!


A rainbow and Mahukona Lighthouse seen from the water.

The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 130. You can see more responses here.





