Continued from
Road to Hana, part 1... If you have not seen the first part then
click here to see it first. Then it will bring you back to this blog posting.
Well, I'm now sulking after a tough loss where my Cats got manhandled at Arkansas. They just didn't prove to be very tough today. I mean,
holy turnovers Cats! That had to be the most turnovers we've had under Cal. I had higher expectations for today after our last two quality wins despite our best player obtaining a season ending injury. Head high, regroup and continue on. I digress...
After my Dad and I left Hana and continued around Haleakala (the Eastern Maui Volcano), the sky finally started to open up. It was fascinating since we were driving along the rain could's edge. The slope of Haleakala is very gradual, so you can never really see the towering peak, which is above the clouds anyway. It's a gradual slop that eventually drops into the ocean.
The water in the next picture was the coolest I have ever seen. The wind was gusting above 30 mph, and was blowing across the water perpendicular to the inland swells. This action gave it an interesting texture, and you can see the criss-cross pattern in the picture below. It was fascinating to see it move. The rain cloud edge and blue sky beyond it gave a nice effect too.
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| Little rainbows kept popping up as the edge of the rain cloud kept moving back and forth over us. |
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| Finally some sun after raining all day. Most of the day, I felt like I was back in NKY in early April. |
The sky opened up just in time for Dadster and I to see the best sunset ever (and I can judge...I see a lot of sunsets living here). The red color bouncing off the dark rain cloud was something I've never seen before.
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| Picture with the sun still hitting the backside of the rain cloud. |
The island you see in the distance is Kaho'Olawe (you might have to pull the picture up to full size by clicking on it). Kaho'Olawe is the smallest of the 8 primary Hawaiian islands. It is 7 miles off the Maui coastline and is 11 miles long by 6 miles wide. It has a total of 45 square miles. No one lives on the island, since it's currently being restored. Why is it being restored you ask? Well sure, Professor Topher will make an appearance...
History lesson (nerd alert): After the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Military declared martial law in Hawai'i, and ceased loads of land across all the islands, including the entirety of Kaho'Olawe. This particular island was very important to the U.S. Military, because it set the tone for how the U.S. Navy would succeed in the Pacific during the war. Unfortunately, the land was really important to the Hawaiians too: it was sacred land to them, and people did live there at the time. The Military practiced raiding the shore here to learn the best methods before they island hopped all over the Pacific, but mostly they used the land for airborne bombing practice, surveillance training and munition testing. One time the Navy wondered how far ships would have to be anchored out to sea to be unharmed from a large land based explosion. So they parked a couple big Navy ships a mile offshore and then several others of varying distances past that. Then they blew up
500 tons of TNT on shore. Long story short: the ships need to be a lot further away than a mile! But think of what happened to the island when they did that. They military gave most post-WWII-ceased land back shortly after the WWII, but not Kaho'Olawe. They continued to use it for munitions testing and bombing drills during the Korean War, Vietnam War and even the Cold War. President Bush signed an order in 1990 to cease testing there and return the land to the state of Hawai'i. The Military started cleanup (which they are still doing) and complied in 1994...after it had be decimated with 50 straight years worth of bombings.
One of the doctors I work closely with is Hawaiian, and she belongs to a conservation group that visits Kaho'Olawe as part of the restoration. She travels there a few times a year to plant grasses and other bushes. She was really excited after returning a few months ago, stating a few grasses were finally taking seed, so they are hoping to plant some tree saplings in a year or two...it'll be a looooong process. In fact, she can only go to a small portion of the island because the U.S. Military is still cleaning up unexploded munitions. My understanding is that the Military isn't being extremely slow about it (since it's been 23 years of cleanup), but that there really is a lot of explosive material still litered across the island. OK, I'll stop the history lesson now, but if you want to read more about Kaho'Olawe, then here's a
case study or you can
google it.
Here's one last picture a couple minutes after the previous one. The sun has set all the way, so it isn't hitting the rain cloud any longer, but you can see Kaho'Olawe a little bit easier just past the fence.
Mahalo for visiting!
