Skip to main content

Whales and Crime

Today, we went on a field trip with our co-op to Makapu'u Point on the southeastern tip of the island.

Whales pass by about this time of year and Makapu'u Point is a great place from which to spot them.

The view is amazing. I wish my pictures could do it justice. The blues and greens of the water don't begin to show up in pictures the way they look in real life.

There is the most adorable lighthouse you ever saw in your life up there! I always think of lighthouses as being tall, skinny buildings but this one is only 46-feet tall. It has the largest lens of any lighthouse in the United States and it is just precious!


There were tons of cacti on the trail to the top. People actually carve their names in them. The hike up is relatively easy. It's paved the entire way and there are a number of places where you can stop to look for whales.



We spotted a number of whale spouts on our way up. That's when the whale blows air out of it's blowhole and causes a "spout" of condensation to shoot up into the air. You always thought it was spouting up water didn't you? It's not. The air warms up in the whales lungs and when it blows the air out into the cool air, it forms water vapor.


It's a bit windy up there.


On our way back down the trail, we saw a mother whale and her baby briefly break the surface. No, I did not get any pictures. Every time we spotted something it was gone faster than we could get our cameras up.

When we finally got back to the parking lot..........

we discovered someone had smashed in the window of our new van and stolen our GPS.

Phooey.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)
Post a Comment
Read more

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...
1 comment
Read more

Luau, Luau

This week we attended our first luau! We went to the luau at the Hale Koa hotel. The grounds were just incredible. There were men playing soft Hawaiian music, the plants and flowers were glorious. There were people in native costumes making headbands out of palm fronds, chopping up fresh coconut for us to taste, handing out flowers for us to put behind our ears and handing out seashell leis to each guest. It was very relaxed and peaceful. This was a Samoan man who kept us entertained during the cocktail hour. He was very funny! Check out those tattoos. He said the tattoos were part of a rite of passage that he had to go through. He said it took fourteen days to complete the tattoo and, yes, it hurt. And yes, everything was tattooed. He demonstrated how to climb a coconut tree using only a bandanna around his feet. They picked people out of the audience and gave them a quick hula lesson. Katie was thrilled to be one of the people chosen and of course it irritated Ben because he thi...
7 comments
Read more