We had a slow morning of waking and breakfast in the room, then gathered up our beach and snorkel gear with a plan to snorkel up near Ke'e Beach on the north end. It was a nice drive up the coast, and we stopped at a viewpoint over the taro fields near Hanalei.
I had attempted here to do long (30 second) exposures using the ND filters. I discovered that flat grey clouds on a flat grey sky do not make for a very interesting long exposure, as there is not enough contrast to show the cloud movement, it just looks like gray sky. In addition to that, my longer exposures had a terrible amount of very sharp looking lint showing up from the filters. I later figured out that the lint was showing up due to my choice to shoot at f/22... whereas shooting at f/8 renders most of the lint so blurry that it doesn't show up in the shot. That may not make sense to many people, but I'm making a note of it here for my own reference in the future, and I might do a longer blog post with photo examples later in my regular blog.
On to lunch! As we arrived in the town of Hanalei, a rain shower passed through the area so we ducked into a parking lot and looked around for a place to eat lunch. We were parked right outside a place called Hanalei Gourmet, so we decided to give that a go.
Their mai tai was a little sweet, but tasty with the extra lime.
I had the nachos with grilled marlin, which sounds odd but was quite tasty and added a bit of "healthy" to an otherwise unhealthy lunch choice. Also, jalapenos are my favorite.
After lunch, we spent a little time in the surf shops adjacent to the restaurant. I found a pair of flip-flops (called "slippas" on the island) which actually had enough arch support that I could wear them without hurting my right toes, so I picked those up for future beach-going. Once we felt our food was digested enough, we continued down to the end of the road for Ke'e Beach.
We passed by the Maniholo dry cave, which had heavy machinery moving boulders just outside of it, while the interior was filled with people wandering about. I commented on how I was happy we managed to get the shots of it that we did last year while it was empty. This was clearly a busy time of year to be in any "tourist" spot on the island... the parking lots were all filled to the brim, and the sides of the road leading up to the beach were covered in parked cars. We managed to get a spot decently close to the beach entrance, pulled our chairs out of the back, and walked up the road to the lifeguard stand... where we discovered that the swimming and snorkeling areas were closed due to dangerously high tides. It was very windy and the skies were threatening additional bouts of rain, and G really wanted to play IN the water, not just sit in sand. I thought perhaps there would be interesting photo opportunities, however the ironwood tree trunks - which had made for very interesting subjects last year - were covered with sand, and everyone coming down from the Kalalau Trail looked miserably muddy, and most were injured, so we decided we would pack it in and find another beach.
On our way out, though, we drove over the bridge which spans a small creek adjacent to a botanical garden. D and I decided this would be a great spot to practice long exposures. G opted to sit in the car and play on her phone rather than come out for photos, so we parked next to the creek and D and I made our way down onto the boulders with tripods and cameras in hand.
Here is where I made the mistake of raising the center post of my tripod, rather than setting the legs longer for a more stable stance. I realized my tripod was a little off kilter, so I kept my left arm out to catch it just in case it tipped during the shot. As I'd feared, the tripod did begin to tip, but rather than wrap my left arm around it (as I had planned) I instinctively also nabbed the post with my right hand, which had been holding the remote until I opened my hand to grab the tripod, at which point I chucked the remote into the drink. I believe my exact words were, "SHIT!" D, for his part, did try to dig around for the remote, but it landed right between two large boulders in fast moving water. Thankfully it is entirely replaceable, and we did have a second (slightly smaller and more difficult to deal with) remote that we were able to share for the rest of the shooting. But lesson learned, set the tripod legs out and tether the damned remote.
I have since ordered two replacement remotes, just in case.
I finished up my creek shooting and headed back to the car, where G had discovered several red-crested cardinals on the hill next to where we had parked. I pulled out my zoom to grab a few shots.
From here we wandered up the road looking for a beach. We decided to stop off at this stretch of sand where we'd spent some time last year... there is a creek that runs out to the ocean on the left side which seemed to give a decently protected entrance into the water to at least wade a bit and/or float around without worrying about the extreme waves crashing on the main beach. Here, D tried to give G some pointers on the timing of using a boogie board
I had entered the water briefly, but the water was cold and the wind was high so I opted to just enjoy the warmth of the sun and sand.
Now that I'm home, I'm able to look up the name of this otherwise unlabeled beach... it turns out it was Lumaha'i Beach, which is one of the least safe beaches on the island in terms of swimming (due to it being completely unprotected by reef or cliff) but it is one of the most beautiful beaches to look at. Also, this was the shooting location for "South Pacific", so that's pretty cool. Visually it was one of my favorite beaches to visit, though the surf was so high that day that the mist coming off the waves looked like smoke blowing over the beach. Due to the salty air, I left my big camera in the car that day. But I did shoot this video of the waves...
On the way back home, as we climbed the hill over Hanalei, I noticed some amazing sunbeams shooting through the clouds, so we stopped on a turn-out to grab some photos.
After such a long day of misadventures, we all felt salty and sticky and none of us wanted to be in a restaurant, so we ordered pizza from Bobby V's just outside the resort and settled in for a movie-and-pizza night. Ironically, we watched "A Walk in the Woods".
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