The beach was absolutely deserted when I arrived (not counting the gatekeeper who dutifully collected $6 for parking), which made sense — it had been a cold, rainy day in November, and it was almost sunset besides. The sand was all wet, covered with tiny little pockmarks from the rain.

Rain was still falling in Santa Monica to the north and somewhere inland in the South Bay — possibly Torrance or Redondo Beach. Lit from the side, Santa Monica looked like there was a golden haze above the city.

It was clear enough that I could see the silhouette of Catalina Island off in the distance to the south (though I didn’t get any good photos of it). I was surprised at how much more I could see from the beach than from my office window, only a couple of miles inland. (I have to remember: LAX is huge.)

As the sun dipped below the horizon, it lit up a column of clouds red from below. Even afterward, it lit up the edges of distant clouds just barely visible peeking over the horizon.

The rain started up again as I left, getting stronger as I drove inland. By the time I got home, I was ready to use an umbrella just walking from the garage to the front door. About a minute later, it really opened up, and I made the mistake of going out to check the mail. Instant soak.

Full photo set (8) at Flickr.

One day a few weeks ago, I tried to make it to the nearest beach I could in time for sunset. I missed…but while on the mostly-deserted beach I caught some nice views of pink underlit clouds over the Santa Monica Mountains, and this view of a closed lifeguard tower at El Segundo Beach.

Then there was the clear afternoon when I went exploring the Palos Verdes area, looking for public parks where I could see the LA basin. Not much luck on that count, but as sunset approached, I decided to see if I could make it up to Del Cerro Park (more photos from this spot taken during daylight) up at the top of the bluffs. I did, and because the park is actually higher than the next hill over, I got to watch the sun set over the ocean and behind a hill at the same time.

I stayed up there for a good 20 minutes after sunset, watching the sky darken through twilight. It was incredibly windy that evening, and even from a thousand feet up with no direct sunlight, I could still watch the waves between the mainland and Catalina Island, moving slowly through the strait like tiny ripples in the direction of the wind.

We carpooled with my parents, and arrived while the group was still stuck in customs. So we wandered around the Santa Monica Promenade and pier for a bit. Not surprisingly, there were some strange things about, like this turtle-themed drinking fountain.

Then there was this sign, on the Johannes van Tilburg Building, which I couldn’t quite decide how to take. “Free Will?” “Free Willy?”

The most disturbing was probably this mash-up of two movies on one of the many theaters on the promenade:

Is the American public ready for that film?

There are topiaries sculpted into the forms of dinosaurs scattered along the promenade. This stegosaurus came out the best:

As I mentioned, we did wander out to the Santa Monica Pier after a bit. Nothing terribly odd, just a couple of photos to set the scene:

We never made it down to South Point (the southernmost tip of the island), partly because of time and partly because—believe it or not—our car rental contract forbid us to drive on the 12-mile road out to the point! Supposedly it’s poorly maintained—or it used to be, and the policy hasn’t kept up—and they don’t want the wear and tear on cars that aren’t designed for it. As I recall, rental trucks and SUVs don’t have the restriction. This was the closest we ever came to it, and you can only barely see it way off in the distance.

If you look at the end of the spray near the visible point, then go straight up toward the horizon, you’ll notice that the sky-sea line dips downward slightly and there’s a faint darker patch of sky. As far as we could tell, that’s the promontory heading out toward South Point. Even then, we weren’t quite sure.

The southern coastline of the island is full of rocky cliffs. Add in the wind that flows westward over the island, and you get some spectacular spray from the waves. It seemed that just about everywhere along that stretch of coast there were little coves, foam, and spray launching dozens of feet into the air. It’s just so hard to catch with a camera.

One of the places we stopped was Punalu‘u Black Sands Beach. Black sand beaches form when lava breaks into small enough pieces for waves to break them down into sand. Unlike white sand beaches, where the sand is made up of coral, black sand beaches have a finite lifetime. Once all the sand is washed out to sea, it’s gone. There are green sand beaches on the island too, but we didn’t get a chance to see any of them except by looking out the window of our plane as it approached Kona.

There was a little shrub all over the beach that reminded me a bit of jade for some reason, though there’s really not much resemblance. A little digging in A Pocket Guide to Hawai‘i’s Trees and Shrubs, and I’ve identified it as beach naupaka. You can see it in the foreground.

While at Punalu’u, I walked out onto the rocks to try to get pictures of the spray up close. Unfortunately the camera’s delay made that nearly impossible. There was a time when the water came a little bit too close, and I backed away in a hurry trying to avoid it without twisting my ankle! This is the best shot I got, but it was often three times that height.

The view inland proved quite a contrast, especially with the cloud cover we had while we were there.

Oh, I may have mentioned this area gets a lot of wind?

The sign says, “Camping Area.” I’m not entirely sure how you’d keep your tent from flying away, judging by that tree.

Note: This trip was Thursday, April 7, 2005.

When we first crossed through Waimea to Hamakua, we took a side trip north to the lookout for Waipio Valley. The valley itself is unreachable without 4-wheel drive (the road has a 25% grade), but the view from the lookout was incredible:

The entire coastline is beautiful, as you can see from this point somewhere along the Hilo or Hamakua coast. (We really should have been keeping track of signs or mile markers. I couldn’t have named this spot by the time we reached the airport.)

The eastern side of the island gets tons of rain. We lucked out in getting there on a clear day, but the signs were everywhere in the gorges cutting through the seaside cliffs, the many streams and waterfalls. This next one wasn’t even a turn-out—we just pulled over to the side of the road and walked back to the bridge. Update: Mark has identified this spot as Maulua Valley. Thanks, Mark!

We drove inland a bit to visit the 420-foot-high Akaka Falls.

The overlook for the falls is reached by a short loop trail through a rain forest, which also passes a vantage point for Kahuna Falls. We took about 20 photos on that “hike”—I mostly shot plants, and Katie mostly shot the streams we crossed. This picture replaced Kaleakekua Bay as my wallpaper on the Powerbook:

And finally, just to prove we made it to Hilo, here’s a beach just outside of town:

Note: This trip was Sunday, April 10, 2005.

That’s not dirt, that’s rock! You may be wondering about the white bits. They’re a sort of temporary graffiti. All through this area, people have dragged out bits of coral to spell out messages ranging from “Hi Mom” and “Aloha Dolly” to “In Memory Of…” For some reason it’s almost universally good-natured. Katie’s got some interesting pictures. that we’ll be posting later.

Here’s a view of the coast itself. Our guide on the Mauna Kea tour told us what was in that stand of palms, but I can’t remember:

(This is also the area where you’ll see the Donkey Crossing signs.)

Here’s another picture that shows a pahoehoe flow (a‘a comes out cooler and chunkier, leaving behind jagged rocks, while pahoehoe is hotter and more liquid, so it flows smoothly and often cools with ripples still visible).

Because of the rain shadow, this side of the island gets a lot more sun, so people have been building resorts along the coast. One of the biggest, Waikoloa, has its own shopping center with its own Macy’s. It was also where our catamaran cruise launched, so we visited their beach. This is probably more what you were expecting from Hawaii:

It was very windy that day. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are roughly straight north-south from each other, so the trade winds just go up and over the saddle in between and hit, well, Waikoloa. And with so few trees in the lava flows, there’s not much to slow them down.

We were very familiar with this stretch of road by the end of the week. Our first trip along it also brought us our first view (from the ground, anyway) of Mauna Kea:

You can actually see some of the observatories up on the peak:

Continuing north you come to the Kohala peninsula and mountain. The oldest of the island’s volcanoes, depending on who you talk to it’s either extinct or very, very dormant. (It’s been thousands of years.) It’s the only area we saw that showed more signs of erosion than vulcanism. Like the island as a whole, it has a wet side and a dry side. The highway runs up along the west side of the ridge to the tip, then along the west coast back to the main part of the island. A lot of the land is current or former ranch land, and you see cows all over the place. The east side doesn’t have a highway, and as near as we can tell is mostly undeveloped. The closest we got was the lookout above Waipio Valley on the east coast. (I’ll also explain why we didn’t get any closer than the lookout!)

These next few pictures are from a turnout up along the ridge of Kohala, looking south toward the coast and the bay.

Oh, yes, about that rain shadow? It explains why Hawaii puts rainbows on its license plates. With full-on rain right next to clear skies, rainbows are incredibly common. Here in southern California we hardly ever see rainbows. I don’t think a day passed in Hawaii that we didn’t see one!

Oh, yeah, rental car trivia: Because Hertz was backed up so badly (Four flights arrived at once, and even spread across several rental agencies, it kept us in line for about an hour), they handed us the first car they had available instead of waiting to get the economy car I’d reserved. They gave us a Buick LeSabre. While it has a lot of nice features, it tries too hard to be a “smart” car. If it can be done automatically, it’ll do it. Light sensors trigger the headlights, moisture sensors trigger the windshield wipers, the air conditioning and heater are handled thermostat-style. If you want to do things on your own terms, you can’t. Definitely not the right car for a Linux user.

One last photo for today. Our first time up this coast we noticed some rather sharply defined dark cloud banks, one out to sea and one across the bay. As we drove north, one of them resolved into the mountain of Kohala, which left us wondering whether the other one might be the next island over. It turns out that yes, you can see Maui from here. Between clouds and haze we never got a clear view, but we at least managed to get a better view than that first day:

Note: Most of these photos were taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2005. A few were earlier or later in that week.