This old tractor now graces a small park area in a gated development in North Kohala.
Posted in response to this week’s Sunday Stills challenge on the theme of ‘Vintage.’ See more responses here.
Tag Archives: Kohala
The mouth of Honokāne Iki valley
At the end of Highway 270, on the northern tip of the island, is Pololu Valley. There’s a trail down to the beach there and, at the other end of the beach, another trail leading up to a bench that overlooks Honokāne Nui valley.
Not far beyond the bench, the trail was destroyed by an earthquake in 2006. It’s still possible to descend to the valley, but the trail goes straight down a steep slope and ropes are in place to make this possible. There are no guarantees that these ropes are in good condition and the slope certainly isn’t. If you do descend this section, the trail passes through varied vegetation and ultimately leads down to a rocky beach at the mouth of Honokāne Nui valley.
Beyond Honokāne Nui, there’s another trail that continues over the next hill and down into Honokāne Iki valley. That valley opens up to this beautiful little bay, which is quite protected and, at low tide, has a nice sandy beach. Be aware though that this is private land and in use on a regular basis.
Happy New Year
What’s this grader got to do with a happy new year? Well, it’s sitting near the edge of a newly-graded house pad at Hapuna Resort. Soon, a house will be built here and when it’s done it will have a fabulous view toward Maui (above) and out over the ocean (below). So it’s kind of a new beginning with a wonderful outlook. I hope your new year has a similarly great prospects.
Yellow boat on blue water
A small fishing boat works the blue waters off the Kohala coast.
Rainbow over the road
Today marks the start of the fourth year for this blog. Post number one was of a rainbow over the northern coast, so I thought I’d post another one on the anniversary.
This rainbow occurred just last week over the road leading up to Hawi. Hawi gets around 60 inches of rain a year. A few miles south, the rainfall drops off to less than 20 inches, and it’s usually dry and sunny there. One byproduct of this climatic contrast is that there are frequent rainbows.
This one occurred in the late afternoon as I was heading home and, even though I see a lot of rainbows, I felt moved to pull over and snap a few photos before heading up into the clouds and rain over Hawi.
Happy Holidays
Kawaihae dirt storm
The winds were blowing here last week, 30+ mph on a consistent basis. But one afternoon the winds picked up even more and triggered dirt storms off the hills above Kawaihae.
The wind whistled down the slope from Kohala Mountain and dry dirt was gathered up, whirled around, and blasted down the slope toward the ocean. This happened for an hour or so. Sometimes, white sand from the beach in Kawaihae harbor was similarly stirred up.
The unfortunate aspect of this display was that it visibly demonstrated the problems with erosion when the ground is dry. If it’s not the wind, then any rainfall washes the soil down gullies and into the ocean. All this dirt being deposited in the relatively shallow waters off the coast degrades the water quality and can have a seriously adverse effect on corals in the area.
Hapuna resort decorations
This is the lobby of the Westin Hapuna Beach Resort on the Kohala coast. Each of the Kohala resort hotels has a version of this look at this time of year.
To be honest, the tree decorations are a little over the top for my taste, not surprising considering I don’t have any decorations or a tree. However, these are minor details. Quibbling about festive decorations misses the point when there’s such a killer view, through the palm trees, over the white sand beach, to the blue Pacific.
Posted in response to this week’s Sunday Stills challenge on the theme of ‘Festive.’ See more offerings here.
Graham's Island 