Off to Waipio
Despite threats of flash flooding and torrential rains, we set off yesterday for the Eastern side of Hawaii. (Um, we lived in Florida for several decades & now live in upstate New York--give us vinyl ponchos a hoodies, a bottle of water and some Macadamia Crunch popcorn and we're ready for anything Mother Nature's got!). We made the right call. We drove back through the rolling, tufted terrain of Hawaii's ranches. The vast openness let us see both the bright blue peaking through the sky and the dense, angry clouds building around Mauna Kea. And the whipping wind seemed a permanent fixture: all the trees were bent away from it with little foliage on the side pummeled by the winds that must flow down from the mountains daily. Oddly, alongside these scrubby trees we also saw cactus! Then, after Waimea, everything changed. The vegetation became lush, overwhelming, sometimes rising 30 feet on either side of the road. We were nearing the Waipio Valley--a beautiful gre...