Blog

This brave dove planted herself in one of our tall pots on the balcony today. She has turned around a few times, but seems to like the breeze in her face. From this prime vantage point, she looks out over the hill below.

(We won’t mention it to her, but the last time a dove nested in that spot, we found the egg cracked and fallen from the nest! I hope this dove fares better. You can read about the previous dove here…and the sad fate of her egg here.)

Jeff and I got to spend a few days on Oahu recently…always one of our favorite places to unwind and relax. Our room at the Hilton Hawaiian Village was perched high, facing Diamond Head and the Waikiki Beach. Notice the evil pigeons that invaded our room each morning! The Hilton is at one end of Waikiki, so it has this wonderful view back over the entire arch of the beach.

One of our favorite spots to stop and snorkel along the North Shore is Sharks Cove…known for its volcanic rocks and warm clear pools. At low tide, the pools are quite shallow, but as the tides come back in, the pools get this cool fluctuation of water levels going. Jeff spotted a humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa fish amongst the rocks 🙂

Some of the nearly North Shore beaches are a bit more active and rougher. This one might be looking back out towards the famous Pipeline beach…famous for its primo surfing. For us, this spot was a great place to get hammered by huge waves.

We stopped at Pali Point, and took a stroll along the old Pali Road. This is the old, twisting route down the pass. Today, its a fun path with great vistas…and some cool post-apocalyptic road images.

Along the Eastern side of the island, we stopped at Lanikai Beach…crystal blue water to bob in as the afternoon sun draws longer shadows. Surprisingly, this stretch of white sand was not crowded. No waves here, I guess. For us, this side of the island has become one of our favorites areas to end the day.

We stopped at another popular overlook to people watch. (This is on the southeast corner of Oahu, near the “blowhole” overlook…although I didn’t take a picture of the blowhole rock this time.) We did get to spot a whale passing by…not the best lens for whale photography, but at least you can see the whale clear its blowhole 🙂

Hmmmm, let’s see…here is our calm pool at the Hilton to float before dinner. Once we trekked back to the room to clean up for the evening, it was hard to resist one last float in water.

We found some wonderful dinner spots on this trip…one of our favortie was dinner outdoors at the Halekulai hotel in Waikiki. This is the House Without A Key lounge/restaurant with amazing an mai tai 🙂 On Thursdays, they serve an out-of-this-world surf and turn burger…and EVERYDAY they serve a truly decadent coconut cake. YUMMM!

On one afternoon, we decided to take a hose ride at the historic Kualoa Ranch on the eastern side of the island. Unfortunately, we had to make reservations a day in advance…non-refundable reservations…and it just so happened that a soaking rain blew through that afternoon. Let me tell you, no begging will get that reservation refunded 🙂 Ah well. It makes for a good story anyway 🙂 We did the full 2-hour trip back into a lush valley. Kinda peaceful after you learn to ignore the raindrops 🙂 Oh, by the way…the cooperative brown horse FACING the camera below is Jeff’s horse. Mine was the white one who didn’t want his pic taken…so I photographed its butt. TAKE THAT!

Back along the North Shore, we stopped at one of the popular beaches…Waimea State Beach. This one is a magnet for the adventurous…of the insane…because it comes complete with a jumping rock…and lots of warnings to NOT jump. We didn’t jump.

And I’ll wrap up this post with a variety of miscelaneous images. FYI, Storto’s is Jeff’s absolute favorite sandwich shop in the world…made extra yummy by their soft, sweet Hawaiian bread. It is worth a stop.

My blog hiatus didn’t stop me from continuing to take snapshots of my hotel windows. Boy have there been a few! Here, you’ll find the TEN hotel rooms I had the pleasure of laying my sleepy head. Its actually much more interesting to look at these windows as a grouping. The bland uniformity of hotel furniture is striking…although a few hotels get kudos for mixing it up a bit 🙂

See if you can pick out the locations: lots of McLean and Seattle. Some southern California in there. San Antonio. Honolulu (ok…that one is obvious). LOL and a lovely shot of scenic DC (hint…its the brick wall).

As I was digging through my work travel photos, I ran across this snippet from the USA Today. This edition came during the height of the swine flu hysteria…AND while I was on travel with the sniffles…thinking that I had surely picked up the swine flu on the flight.  Sooooo, I found it particularly humorous…or disturbing…that USA Today chose two stories to highlight from its website:  swine flu and American Idol.

There is a quirky art installation near Inspiration Point in the Presidio. In a recently cleared and re-planted section of the aging historic forest, artist Andy Goldsworthy has assembled a tower of felled lumber called The Spire.