Waimea Canyon

The first thing we did on our first full day on the island was take a helicopter ride. They say you really should take one on Kaua'i, and they're right. There is so much amazing scenery there.

The first part of the ride was in Waimea Canyon. They call it the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. All of these pictures are from there, but only some are from the air.  We saw it twice from the ground. There is one main canyon that runs south towards Waimea, and quite a few tributary canyons that come down from the rainy mouintain top. So there's a road that runs along the west rim of the canyon opposite all the feeder canyons, and that's where the rest of the pictures were taken. Some pics were mine on the big camera, and some were Cyn's from the little one. All of the ones showing the inside of the helicopter were hers, but some of the others were also hers.

 1.
This is in the lower part of the canyon, where it's greener.

These pictures are in more-or-less numerical order, which isn't very helpful to you. There are twenty-six images in this post, each a little over 110 Kb, so if you're on dial up, you might want to get another cup of coffee or something.

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a fire

There's a fire just down the road from us. Fire trucks have been going by the house for the last forty-five minutes or more. It's probably The Family Farm. That's one of those farms where people take their kids to see farm animals and such. I'm not sure what the damage is going to be, but it's got to be devastating.

the fire

The newspaper said firefighters from five departments battled the blaze and it lasted for over four hours. I'm sure that sounds a little more dramatic than it really was, but barn fires are a little tough, due to the size, amount of flammable material and location. I realized all the trucks I saw going by for quite some time were pumper trucks bringing water. 100,000 gallons of it. The article said they got all the animals out. A couple other buildings were slightly damaged. I wonder what this will do to their business this season.

We drove by at sunset, after the firefighters had gone. The blackened wreckage was still smoking, and we saw a bit of flame. And a news crew doing a live remote (must have been a slow news day).

( a picture )

An article said the owner was able to get a llama out of the barn before the fire department barred her from going back in. Two hours later, when the upper part of the barn had completely burned down, firefighters entered the lower part where they dicovered all of the remaining animals (birds, mostly) still alive.