feels like the desert

Our house has been extremely dry this winter. Our high-efficiency furnace does a good job of removing all the moisture from the air. :-( We've had a humidifier running almost constantly, but there's white dust everywhere because of the minerals in the water. Hawaii was so nice, climate-wise. It is very humid there, though it never felt bad. But when we got back, my skin turned all itchy again, and Cyn's sinues started bothering her.

It's been warm since friday. Almost all the snow is gone now. Been a lot of flood warnings. That happens when all of your snow melts in four days. It was warm enough to open the windows for a while yesterday. Hopefully, that brought a little bit of humidity back into the house.

Sleeping Giant

There's a hill on the east side of the island that's called Sleeping Giant, because it vaguely resembles a reclining person. It's somewhat isolated from the rest of the mountains, so you can get a good view of the entire eastern part of the island. One fifth of the entire island, I'd say. I guess Nou'nou was the Hawaiian's name for the hill. We took the Nou'nou East trail. I think it was the shortest and steepest of the three trails there.

 1.

( +10, not too exciting )

Ke'e and Ha'ena beaches

On Monday morning, bright and early (like, 8:30), we drove up the road to Ke'e Beach. It's at the end of the road, on the northwest end of Kaua'i. The day before, we had taken our helicopter ride, which is when I took this photo.


Ke'e beach is right at the bottom of the picture. You can see the road winding through the trees at the base of the cliffs. Our pilot called it "the land of no parking spaces." There were only about four cars in the lot when we got there. We walked around the point to Ha'ena beach, which is in the cove. Then we walked the road back. As you can see, the beaches are ringed with reefs. They say it's great snorkeling in the summer when the ocean is calm. That's a really big reef (obviously) out from the point on the far side of the cove. The point in the distance is Princeville, and the point in the haze beyond that is Kilauea (pictures of that tomorrow). You can see two little points sticking out into the bay this side of Princeville. Just this side of the nearer one is where the road headed up into the valley where our cottage was. The second is the near side of Hanalei Bay (the other side of which is Princeville). So there you have it. Now back to our walk...

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