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This post is a continuation of another post where I started sharing a bunch of images captured during our stay on Molokai in April. To see the first installment, CLICK HERE.

Basically, we spent a lot of time sitting on our patio, relaxing. I am not usually a napper, even on vacation, so I spent a lot of time just sitting, watching and listening to the waves. When I got tired of sitting still, I’d walk down to the beach. There’s always something to do at the beach, even if it’s just standing there, toes in the water, watching as the breakers roll in. Sometimes Mike would come along, but he gets bored with stuff more-quickly than me.

I shared this same satellite map view in another post. The red arrow points to our cottage, the blue arrow points to our cottage beach, and the green arrow points to the bigger beach south of the cottage resort complex, which I came to refer to as the “rock shelf” beach.

Standing on the point of land just beyond the pool area, I was tickled to see a cool lava-rock formation that’s been carved by the surf. It’s only visible when the tide is out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I could, and did, spend hours just walking along that beach, looking at the rocks, watching and listening to the waves pounding against the shore. It was very relaxing. Definitely fodder for future daydreams.

Some people might get bored in a place like that, so isolated and free of people with all their man-made noise. It was not a “quiet” place, i.e., absence of sound, but the sounds of nature are music to my ears.

I still have lots more Molokai pics to share. Work has gotten busy, which is why I’ve been delayed. Again. The older I get, the less-inclined I am to want to look at a computer screen during my off hours. After a while, it starts to feel like I’m living my life in a video game. This new job, while definitely better than the last, is still intense. Everything is on a tight deadline. And there are never enough hours in a day to get it all done. We are building a new team and working the kinks out of all-new processes, which will make things easier one day, but things are not easy right now.

I guess I’ll finish sharing vacation pics eventually.

I have been “working” on this post for days. As with most of my posts, I start by looking through pics and isolating those I want to share. I save a copy of shareable pics to a certain folder so I can re-size them, crop, zoom, etc. When I finished that exercise for the Molokai images, I probably had about 200 images to share. Really.

That’s a lot of images for a blog post. I started tossing images that I thought maybe no one but me would really want to see, but then I stopped. I have lots of pics I think should be shared so I’m going to share them. No one HAS to look, right? LOL.

Molokai really was awesome. And I only gave y’all a little peek so far. Now I’m going to fill-in the gaps.

LOCATION

Molokai isn’t a big island, but it’s diverse. Anyone who stumbles across this post, loves what they see, and decides they really want to visit the island and experience what they see in the pics, would be sorely disappointed if they stayed elsewhere on the island. Because the beaches are very different in other parts of the island.

Our cottage is located on the far western tip of Molokai. There’s an old hotel (no longer operational) and a bunch of cottages at the complex. There’s a lovely swimming pool that sits on a bluff overlooking the beach and a tiny little convenience store, which is open daily and chock-full of essentials.

Driving from the airport to the cottage, my eyes were drawn to the amazingly vivid contrast between the red ground and the blue sky and the big, puffy, white clouds. The following image captured it pretty well, but seeing it in person is always better.

PROPERTY DESCRIPTION

It’s a little weird having the old, abandoned hotel right there, but it’s reasonably well-maintained. The building that features prominently in many of my pics was the beach rental/snack shop/bath-house (I think) for the hotel. It’s kind of in disrepair and should probably be torn down, but it’s not so much of an eyesore that it needs razing immediately. It didn’t bother me at all, it just became part of the scenery. It did obstruct our view of the water and beach a bit, but it was still such a fabulous view that I wouldn’t even think to complain.

Really, how could anyone complain about that view? And it was so close to the water, it was impossible NOT to hear the waves.

There were actually several beaches within walking distance. In the satellite map view shown below, the red hour points to our cottage, the blue arrow points to our cottage beach, and the green arrow points to a bigger beach just south of the cottage, which I came to refer to as the “rock shelf” beach. The cottage beach was busier than the rock shelf beach, but “busy” is relative. The most people we saw on the cottage beach at any one time was maybe 12, certainly no more than 20. And usually both beaches were empty.

When I got tired of sitting on the patio, staring out at the water, I’d go to the beach. When I got tired of being on the beach, I’d return to the cottage and stare at the water some more. Hubby spent most of his time on the patio.

In case anyone is interested in renting the same cottage, here’s their website. I actually found the cottage at VRBO.com first. There are other places to rent on the island, but no major chain hotels. The cottage may not be idyllic at all times of the year — they can be plagued by rodents and/or insects at certain times of the year — but it was perfect for us.

COTTAGE BEACH

All of these images were either captured from the patio or on/around “cottage beach.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up… the rock shelf beach. 🙂

I’m not nearly as good at photography as I would like to be. It takes a lot of time, skill, knowledge, patience, and a very steady hand. But I think I capture some pretty good snapshots.

There was much to photograph in Hawaii. As much as I love sunsets, I had to try and capture that one, good shot-of-a-lifetime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I captured lots of sunset pics, but I haven’t captured that once-in-a-lifetime shot yet. I’ll just have to keep on trying.

Just when you think life has settled down, something else crops up. This has been a busy year for me. There have been multiple trips to my Dad’s house to help him deal with some health issues, most of which are still unresolved. He’s doing okay, but we are still working on things and I’d rather not go into detail. I will likely need to go up and spend time with him on a more-regular basis, to help him manage a variety of little things that have just become too much for him.

May 1-5, I went to visit a friend. May 9-12 I was at Dad’s again. Then, the biggest and brightest “upheaval”… I started a new job May 13, so had to spend the 13-16 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The job I started in September with the employer based in Minnesota was not a good fit for me. After being laid off from my last two jobs with a little over a year at each of those employers, I hated even the thought of looking for another job. I don’t want to be a job-hopper. Really. But the role at the Minnesota company would have required a whole lot of stress with the potential for many long days/extra hours. I’m not opposed to long days on occasion, but knowing it was more likely to be the norm than the exception didn’t appeal to me. And when an opportunity presented itself sort of out-of-the-blue, I went for it. I think it’s going to be a MUCH better fit for me.

During these unsettled times, thoughts of our Molokai cottage help sustain me. It really was a magical place. The setting was perfect. Hubby described it as an oceanfront cottage at a sparsely populated resort in the middle of nowhere. But I am getting ahead of myself…

Of all the Hawaiian islands we visited, Molokai was the smallest. It was also the least-populated by residents and tourists alike. There’s not even a single traffic light on the island! No lifeguards, either, so common sense was required.

Getting to Molokai was a little adventure for us in and of itself. I did not book those flights much in advance. I think I booked the Molokai trip two days prior to the actual journey. There are a couple of small airlines that have regular island-to-island flights. We chose to fly with Mokulele airlines, despite some mixed reviews we saw online, and we could not have been happier with the service.

It was a wee disconcerting for me being able to see the landing gear from my window. Later, Hubby reported that he saw the other wheel from his window.

They assigned seats at the “terminal” which was more like a trailer. The kind used as auxiliary classrooms at over-crowded elementary schools. We all, maybe eight passengers total, lined up at the gate — a six-foot tall wire fence — ordered by weight then walked out across the tarmac like a line of schoolchildren to board the airplane. I think there were seats for about 12 passengers in all. It felt more like a sightseeing tour than a journey. I’m glad it wasn’t a scheduled, three-hour tour! 🙂

In all, I think the flight took about 30 minutes.

We arrived on the island earlier than anticipated. Not knowing how long the drive to the Honolulu airport would require at rush hour, we left our North Shore house sooner than we needed to and arrived at the terminal a couple of hours before our scheduled flight. Rather than let us sit, waiting, the airline just put us onto the next flight, which was pretty awesome, except we couldn’t check into our cottage until about 3:00.

We stopped in the town of Kaunakakai, population 3,425 at the 2010 census, for a leisurely brunch. We finished shortly after noon. Since we had a few hours to kill, we decided to head up to Pālāʻau State Park, a place I’d seen described as having a scenic overview of the historic Kalaupapa peninsula, an isolated and hard-to-reach piece of land to which persons with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) were once banished. I’d also read that there was a short trail leading to a phallic stone thought to enhance fertility. Who can resist a good penis-shaped rock?

As I’d read, there was an overlook from which you can see the leper town. Look closely and you’ll see the beach on the left is composed of regular sand, but the beach on the right is a black-sand beach.

Many people think there’s one black-sand beach in Hawaii, but there are actually many.

Because of the low clouds, the air was very moist, but cool. It almost felt like we were walking though a rain forest. There were other people there, but only a few. And they were quiet, which was nice. The dense carpet of pine needles helped muffle unwelcome sound.

There was interestingness everywhere. In so many ways, Hawaii is a bit unreal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We could have paid an exorbitant price to ride mules down very narrow trails along crazy-steep cliffs to tour the leper colony, but we chose not to. Instead, we drove back across the middle of the island to the western edge, which is where we’d booked a cottage.

I don’t think I ever took a picture of the front side of the cottage. It was kind of unremarkable.

 

I’ll never forget that sight. I stared at it for days. It’s what kept me from blogging or otherwise doing anything that required my attention for more the a few minutes, especially if it meant staring at electronics.

We didn’t do a whole lot on Molokai.

 

 

Yes, we could hear the waves at night. It was so loud, you couldn’t NOT hear it. It was amazing.

 

We never did eat in the kitchen. What meals we prepared at the cottage, we ate on the patio. Can you blame us?

 

The sunset that first night was a little disappointing, but there would be other sunsets.

And even a sunset like that, which is far from the prettiest one I have ever seen or captured, is a beautiful sight to see. It really was the perfect location, and we enjoyed five very relaxing nights there.

I have lots more pics to share.

I am the family travel planner. It’s always been that way. Either because I’m so good at doing it or Mike doesn’t care where we go, what we see, and/or what we do while we are traveling. Maybe he’s just happy to be on the move?

More than once, people have told me I could make a living as a travel planner. I disagree. Travel is a very personal thing. Everyone has particular likes and dislikes that must be considered to make a trip a success. From things to see and do, type of lodging, preferred methods of getting around, type of food, experiences, tourist spots, etc., to amount of time allotted in any one spot and locations to avoid. There are a lot of factors to be considered. Especially when visiting a place like Hawaii with its multiple, diverse islands. You have to know yourself and your travel companions very well to “get” what they like or not because many people have a difficult time articulating all of the little details or nuances that can make or break a trip.

I always start trip preparation by asking Mike to let me know if there’s anything in particular he wants to see and/or do in a particular spot or area. His list for Hawaii was short; Pearl Harbor and Volcanoes National Park. Easy-peasy. For me, it was Volcanoes National Park, beaches, beaches, and more beaches. Because the island of Oahu is so populated, if it weren’t for the fact that Pearl Harbor is there, we may have skipped the island altogether.

I’m glad we didn’t skip Oahu, of course. Even I wanted to see where Japan attacked the US in 1941.

One can’t help but try to imagine what it must have been like to have been there during the firestorm. Planes flying low overhead, bombs dropping and exploding, fire and smoke belching and billowing out of structures, people lying dead, dismembered, or maybe only injured. Imagine the myriad sounds and smells…

I imagine there were a lot of screams, too. It wasn’t just the military under attack, although that was the focus. There were many, many civilians in the area, too. Women and children. Elderly people. All going about their normal lives.

The National Park Service (NPS) always does a good job helping people understand the places the NPS was created to protect. There were a number of displays, photographs, artifacts, etc., as well as various videos playing interviews with people who had been there that fateful morning and survived to tell about it. Powerful stuff.

As explained on the NPS website:

The Battleship USS Arizona was bombed on December 7, 1941, about 15 minutes into the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, killing 1,177 sailors and Marines. Over 900 could not be recovered from the ship and remain onboard. Today, Arizona rests where she fell, submerged in about 40 feet of water just off the coast of Ford Island.

Designed by Honolulu architect Alfred Preis, the USS Arizona Memorial was built in 1962 on top of (but not touching) the sunken USS Arizona. The memorial honors the memory of the crew of the USS Arizona, as well as all the other service members and civilians killed in the attack. A total of 2,341 sailors, soldiers, and Marines died as a result of the attack, as well as 49 civilians.

If you’d like to learn more about the memorial and see how it looks from the air, with the sunken ship visible underneath, CLICK HERE.

The pier at the actual site is in need of repair, so we could not go inside the structure and look down upon the ship, which is mostly intact and resting on the harbor floor with about 900 bodies entombed inside.

 

 

 

 

It was a beautiful day for a boat ride.

 

 

 

After a few sobering hours at Pearl Harbor, we were both ready to move on. Our next stop was the Pu’u ‘Ualaka’a State Wayside, a state park I read about in a travel guide, which is described on its website as, “Conveniently located close to downtown Honolulu, Puʻu ʻUalakaʻa State Wayside provides a beautiful, panoramic view of southern Oahu from Diamond Head to Pearl Harbor.”

Who can resist a good panoramic view?

I hadn’t seen pictures, I had only read a little bit about the park. It was a winding, twisty, steep, narrow drive to get to the top. Essentially, we were driving through a jungle. The road was paved and in relatively good condition as there are homes scattered along the route, but the vegetation was very thick and dense.

We finally came to a pull-off where we could get out and see. That’s Honolulu in the shot above.

According to the state’s website, “Diamond Head is a defining feature of the view known to residents and tourists of Waikīkī. The volcanic tuff cone is a State Monument. While part of it is closed to the public and serves as a platform for antennas used by the US government, the crater’s proximity to Honolulu’s resort hotels and beaches makes the rest of it a popular destination.”

There are trails for people to climb to the top of Diamond Head, but we weren’t feeling quite that energetic.

 

 

 

Perhaps it’s clear why we wanted to stay on the other, “wilder” side of the island? It just looked like a big city from afar. So much so that I almost said, “screw visiting Waikiki.” Almost. But we were THAT close to a world-famous beach, I figured we really should make our way through the concrete jungle and its masses of people for a closer look.

The view out over the water from the beach was lovely. I can certainly see the appeal of the beach to people who are visiting the city and have no car and/or no desire to explore less-populated places on the island. But the view looking inland from the beach was just like the view of any other big city except maybe a bit more-colorful, especially since lots of folks were wearing Hawaiian shirts.

I much prefer the wilder side of things.

It may not be as gentle a place for swimming, but it was definitely more peaceful.

 

Even though the beach was more-crowded at that point than we’d ever seen it, I still preferred it to the beach in the city.

It was a long, busy day for both of us. We had a nice, relaxing late-lunch/early dinner, drank some beer, napped, drank some beer, and then started packing in preparation for our first island hop over to Molokai the next morning.

We did capture some interesting pics from the plane the next day.

 

 

 

It wouldn’t be the worst place in the world to live, I guess. But it certainly will not be my first choice if I ever need to relocate to Hawaii.

I’ll have to tell you about the whole island-hopping experience on small airplanes in another post. I was not sad to leave Oahu behind, because I was really, REALLY looking forward to seeing the gem of a cottage I found for us to spend five nights of complete quiet relaxation on Molokai. It made even the North Shore look like a densely populated place in comparison.

The North Shore apartment we rented was not fancy. It was the first floor of a family’s home, although we never actually saw the family. We did see and hear their dogs. And, during the last full day of our stay, a group of men were working on a project in the backyard. The best thing about the place was its location, specifically that it was just a five-minute walk to the beach. Other than the dog noises and those workmen, the house was relatively quiet and was situated in a lovely yard full of tropical plants.

There may have actually been two different families living in the spaces above us. There were at least two dogs.

It’s always interesting seeing shrub-sized plants like these growing outdoors. Where we live, one only ever sees very small specimens of tropical plants like that growing in pots at garden centers or many indoors at a large botanical garden.

We have lizards near us, but none that look quite like the one pictured. There were several of them in and around the garden.

There was almost always a breeze going while we were on Oahu. Every photo I captured of a Bird of Paradise flower in full bloom was blurry. But I think this bud is interesting enough to share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apparently there are a lot of different kinds of palm trees.

The next picture was capture behind the apartment.

The rest of the images shared here were captured during a walk to and from the beach.

The image on the far-left of that collage was taken from the beach, heading toward the apartment.

The yard of the next-door neighbor was meticulously maintained. I saw the homeowner on several occasions, carefully tending to the many plants.  It was pretty amazing.

 

 

 

The scene captured in the next two images made me chuckle aloud.

I imagined the person doing the power-washing, a chore that can be quite time-consuming, wanting to get done quickly, so they decided to make wave patterns on the concrete. It’s sort of appropriate, since the house is near the beach, but have you ever seen patterns left behind like that?

I really just think the person doing the power-washing could only think about the beach, i.e., how much they love the beach, how happy they are to live at the beach, how badly they wanted to get back to the beach to swim or surf or whatever, so they came up with this very creative way to do just that. Once they saw how long it took to get the sidewalk really clean, as pictured at the bottom of the image, they said “screw this!” and improvised. I suspect they didn’t really set out to make wave patterns on the sidewalk, they just wanted to get the job done faster so they could get back to the beach. Quite clever, if you ask me.

That was our North Shore neighborhood. In my next post I will be sharing pics from the other, more densely populated side of the island, captured the day we visited Honolulu, specifically Pearl Harbor and the world famous Waikiki Beach.