Tag Archives: Hualalai

Old Saddle Road

Horses off Old Saddle Road on the Big Island, Hawaii
Horses frolic in pasture land alongside Old Saddle Road.

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Road Trippin’.’ See more responses here. Since there aren’t any road trips, in the usual sense of the expression, here on the island, I thought I’d focus on a stretch of road that is one of my favorite drives here.

Old Saddle Road is an 11 mile stretch of the old highway that connected the west side of the island to the east side, through the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. These days, people take the new road, which is wide and smooth and allows drivers to zip along at 80 mph even though the speed limit is 60 mph. I like this highway, too, but the best part of any cross-island trip is always the old highway, which is up and down, winding, and dotted with one lane narrows where culverts pass under the highway (they’re not bridges) to channel the copious amounts of rain away from the road.

This stretch of road is bordered by ranch land, with horses, cattle, and sheep to the fore. There’s also a good variety of wildlife that can be seen in this area. And the weather can be anything from stunning to biblically awful, sometimes within the hour. So here are a few scenes that give an idea of that short, but special drive.

A ranch off Old Saddle Road on the Big Island, Hawaii
One of the ranches on Old Saddle Road.
Old Saddle Road on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Old Saddle Road undulates down towards the junction with the new highway.
View of Hualalai from Old Saddle Road on the Big Island, Hawaii
A view of Hualalai from Old Saddle Road, showing the new highway winding down towards Kailua Kona.
Two goats off Old Saddle Road on the Big Island, Hawaii
Goats can often be seen alongside Old Saddle Road.
A pueo off Old Saddle Road on the Big Island, Hawaii
O;d Saddle Road is a great place to see pueos, the endemic Hawaiian short-eared owl.
A pueo catches a mouse off Old Saddle Road on the Big Island, Hawaii
Sometimes I’m lucky enough to see a pueo catch a meal.
Mist in the trees off Old Saddle Road on the Big Island, Hawaii
Old Saddle Road can be shrouded in mist…
A view of Mauna Kea from Old Saddle Road on the Big Island, Hawaii
…or glow in the evening sun…
Sunset from Old Saddle Road on the Big Island, Hawaii
…and it’s a great place to take in the sunset.

Fishing float

An inflated bag, used as a fishing float, on the waters off Hawaii

I saw this floating bag while out snorkeling. It looks like flotsam, but people fishing use such bags to get their hook and line out far enough to where it won’t get snagged on rocks and coral. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to see such bags, deflated and abandoned, left behind in the water. That’s because they do sometimes get caught on rocks or because the line broke leaving them to drift, just one more bit of drifting garbage.

Later that same day

A view towards Hualalai volcano
A view towards Hualalai volcano, obscured by vog

I took the top photo on my way to work one early morning. It’s a tranquil scene (the reason I go down there) shot from the beach below Pu’ukohala Heiau in Kawaihae. The second photo was shot on my way home in mid-afternoon. It was taken from the same beach in roughly the same place and looking in roughly the same direction.

Astute observers will see past the similarities in the photos and notice something is missing. Hualalai Volcano has disappeared. Now, it’s not unreasonable to think that those puffy white clouds in the second photo have something to do with this, but that’s not really the case. True, they might mask the upper reaches of the volcano, but the whole thing? No, the culprit is the fuzzy band between the clouds and the land – vog!

The latest eruption of Kilauea Volcano, which began on September 29th, is churning out vog, which forms when volcanic gases interact with sunlight, air, moisture, and dust. Two days later, when these photos were taken, it was having a visible effect. I’d noticed the vog drifting up the west side of the island during the morning and by afternoon visibility was greatly reduced. But it’s not just visibility that’s affected. Vog is especially troublesome for people with breathing difficulties, but can also irritate the eyes and skin of just about anyone.

Posted in response to Becky’s October Squares challenge theme of ‘Past Squares – Time.’ See more responses here.

Red-masked parakeets

Red-masked parakeets at Kohanaiki Beach Park.
A Red-masked parakeet at Kohanaiki Beach Park.

I’ve lived in Hawaii for more than nine years now and had previously never seen any of those most tropical of birds, the parrots. One reason for this is that parrots aren’t native to Hawaii, but a variety of different parrots have become established here.

Red-masked parakeets were first seen here in 1988 and are probably the most common parrot on the Big Island. They’re natives of Ecuador and Peru, but are now fairly well established on the Kona coast, which is where I saw this a pair, in Kohanaiki Beach Park. While they forage along the coast here, they roost high up on the slopes of Hualalai Volcano.