Well that is an intriguing title or not, but let me explain. As Tom will vociferously tell you, I take pictures everywhere I go. Some of them just don’t fit into a walk/hike/climb post, but are worth sharing – at least I think they are. So this post is dedicated to them.

The first section I’m calling my Dr. Seuss Collection because that’s what I thought of when I took these pictures. They’re kind of funny and quirky like objects from a Seuss book.

Okay, moving right along. These are just random pictures that I thought you would enjoy because I do.

As always, I have to include pictures of the local flowers that are everywhere:

 

Each time I am in Hawaii I am struck by the wonder, power and the grandeur in and around these small islands. Tom kids me about constantly photographing everything I see, but I find such amazing, breathtaking beauty in nature that have a need to capture and hold on to it through my camera.

   

 

Okay, I know it’s a long weird title but you’ll understand it soon.

Yesterday’s hike was to Maunawili Falls. We had attempted it a couple of days ago and decided that we were not properly attired so we abandoned the endeavor and went out to eat instead. The reason we gave it up was because Tom was in flip-flops and I had on tennis shoes that I didn’t want ruined.

Anyway, we returned with reef shoes, bug spray, and determination to go the distance. The trail, as many of them do, started out pretty easy. I think that it’s to lure you in and then wham! you’re in too deep to back out. This trail is through a rainforest  and follows a small babbling brook to the falls.

The scenery is lovely but the trail – not so much.

Now you understand the reef shoes. They had pretty good tread but it was still slow, tough going. It took at least 45min. to get through the worst of the mud

and then we hit the stairs.

But we made it down and walked along the creek to the falls. 

  The worst part about the stairs was that once we got down, we had to turn around and climb back up.

 We did make it,  sat caught our breath and admired the scenery.

When we were breathing normally again, we hit the connecting trail toward the top of the mountain. Each part of the trail had it’s own obstacles – root covered trails and fern forests were the ones for this leg of the hike.

The fern forest was pretty but hiking through it was not fun. The ferns had taken over the trail, so you needed a machete to hack your way along. Unfortunately, we neglected to include one in our careful preparations, so we used our bodies and plowed through – not so great on bare arms and legs.

Despite the scratches we made it to the top where we snacked on granola bars and viewed the fruits of our labor.

The rain didn’t last long – just enough to make it more wet and slippery. So we again charged through the fern forest, stumbled over roots, slithered through mud and made it back – muddy, battered and bloody – to the beginning of the trail. Well, the battered and bloody is a bit extreme. We both had some scratches and were definitely muddy but not really battered. We were hungry, however, so we headed to a nearby park for – you guessed it – our hiking fare of Aloha burgers!

Okay, so I’ve added a new category to our activities and that is the climb.

Today we tackled a climb. I have no doubt that true climbers would sneer and scoff at calling what we did a climb and rightly so. However, for us it was a climb and a challenge.

In all it only took us about an hour, but still, parts of it were pretty scary.

 

But the views from the top were very cool, and it was good exercise.

The hike home had some pretty views too.

The first hike I blogged about on this trip was to Kealia Trail. I explained that it was a hike and not a walk, but now I am revising that statement. After some of the hikes! we’ve done since, I’m renaming it a waike, or a hialk or maybe just an off-road walk. Anyway, as far as hikes go it is pretty easy and we’ve done it several times on the days we haven’t done a real hike.

The “Another Perspective” comes from the approach. This trail actually goes around the whole northern edge of the island of Oahu. We usually access it from the west side of the island near our condo, but today we drove about an hour to the other side of the island for a change.

The trail on this side was even easier – drivable very slowly in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Still, round trip was about 6 miles.

Anyway, in this expose, I’m going to explain a little more about this trail and about Kealia Point.

As I mentioned before, this trail ends in a wild life preserve. “Preserved from what?” you might ask. Well let me explain. This area is a primary nesting area for dozens of species of seabirds. These birds spend most of their lives at sea and come to the shore once a year to nest. These birds are being preserved from many predators but the main one is the mongoose.

“But he’s so cute,” you might say. Let me tell you about him. The Mongoose was introduced to Hawaii in the 1800’s by the local people to deal with the growing rat population. The only problem, rats are nocturnal(sleep during the day) and mongoose sleep at night. That didn’t work out so well did it? The mongoose population thrived as did the rat population, I guess.  Anyway, one of the mongoose’s favorite foods is bird eggs. This has become such a problem that many seabird species are near extinction – thus the preserves.

In this preserve, the whole northern tip of the island is fenced off. There are double gates at every entrance. You enter one and close it before opening the second. It’s a pretty nifty system.

Inside, here and there you will see rodent traps.

I’m sure they relocate the little fellows to another part of the island.

I think that the project must be working because everywhere we looked we saw nests nestled in the bushes, yea!

Up at the lighthouse again, Tom and I rested, munched granola bars, and enjoyed the scenery.  This blowhole is actually on the other Kealia Trail but I didn’t have it for the first post so I’m adding it in here.  We hear it each time we hike that trail and this time I caught it on video. Turn up the volume. It’s pretty fun. 

 Then we headed back.

Later, we drove to a beach park near the condo for an evening cookout – you guessed it – Aloha burgers but this time topped with slices of pineapple and guacamole, yuuuuummm!, add baked beans and a bottle of wine – heaven!

The sunsets were heaven, too.