The Big Island

This season we are taking quite a big break from cruising.

Our first stop is The Big Island. That's right -- HAWAII!

'Pumpkin' was a nice perk of our Airbnb, along with a covered patio. Two big drawbacks -- there was no AC, and there WERE coqui frogs, whose mating call can reach 90 decibels. Yeah. VERY difficult to sleep.

We stayed 'on the Kona side'. Driving south, one of our first stops was the Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park. It's a very sacred spot known as 'the place of refuge'. This is a royal fish pond. Out in the bay, tour boats brought people to swim with the dolphins.

Our place was in Holualoa, so we visited the Holualoa Kona Coffee Co, complete with tastings. Here is a branch, which shows the stages of coffee growth. From R to L you go from buds to blooms to cherries. The flowers are known as Kona Snow, and have a light fragrance similar to honeysuckle.

Back home on our patio, I was amused by many geckos.

One day we drove north to the Kohala district.
We visited the original statue cast of King Kamehameha, near where he was born.

We drove to the end of the road, at the Pololu Valley overlook.

We stopped at the Keokea Beach Park to watch the waves, and these birds disproved the 'birds of a feather flock together' saying. Five different birds! A red-crested cardinal, a Northern cardinal, saffron sparrows, a common myna, and a dove.

Our drove over to the Hilo side was expected to be rainy -- if you can call 8 inches 'rainy'.  The worst of it held off until just as we were finishing our visit to the black sand beach at Punalu'u.

Large grit, but VERY black, and a bit difficult to walk on, especially in bare feet.

I rolled up my pant legs, but the ocean jumped me!

We stopped at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but the rain was POURING! We didn't see much, but watched their movie and visited the gift shop. This is a 3-D map of the island, in the correct orientation, north at top.

We did walk a little ways through the Thurston Lava Tube. I was amazed how well this photo turned out with no flash!

Our second Airbnb was a room in a house. Jack made fabulous breakfasts, which included fruit grown on the property! Harrison had nice tourist tips. This sign is at the Ahalanui County Beach Park, which is where the 'King's Pool' is --
a geo-thermal pool.

This road ends near Kalapana, a village overrun by lava. We drive to the end, but don't want to attempt the 4-mile hike to the lava overlook. But even with rain clouds, the steam cloud where the lava meets the ocean is very evident -- 4 miles away!

This Airbnb had cats too! This is Diego, who liked to spend time near us. He was LARGE, and affectionate and talkative, but not cuddly. His brother Boots came to check us out, once, but we would see him in the field on occasion.

Papayas at sunset

The next day we spend an hour or so at the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Factory.
Yes, there were free samples.
We were surprised to find that we preferred the milk chocolate ones to dark chocolate!

 THEN, we were on our way to the BEST highlight of the Big Island! We took a tour from Blue Hawaiian Helicopters! Expensive, but it was worth every penny. Especially since it was raining the day we drove over the volcano. NOW we get the view -- viewS.

Approach. There are tour boats that go too. But heck, we LIVE on a boat. And Al has never been on a helicopter.

Way at the top of the photo, where the lava field ends and the green begins, is Kanapali. That is where they allow tourists to park, and begin the 4-mile hike to the lava overlook.  Across the lava, in the sun, with only water you have brought - hopefully, and no potties. No thanks. Well, they do rent bicycles too. But that doesn't appeal to us as much either. We DO like the air-conditioned view from the helicopter.
Oh, look how much you can see underwater!

I love my zoom!!! See the hot spot?!  And that shelf? Overnight it fell into the ocean. We were told that it changes everyday. And we were among the last to see it this way. We were the first of about 5 or 6 helicopters on the 4:00 flights -- last of the day.

 This is a great webpage:  https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/kilauea.html

The pilot takes us up the slope to a steam vent, where a lava tube has collapsed and made a crater. The next photo is a zoom of the small crater above the big one.

Hot lava!

The finale is several passes over a remote area that the locals call Narnia. This side of the island gets plenty of rain, and it has filled the calderas. These falls are on private property, and permission must be granted to hike in. Our host Harrison says he has gone swimming here.

This is a wonderful culmination of our Big Island visit. 

Shoal Harbour

The entrance to Shoal Harbor is just around the corner from Billy Proctor's place. It is a nice secure anchorage to hold up for a few days, during which some higher winds are predicted. That's alright. We don't mind relaxing for several days.

A couple families of mergansers

There are basically two arms to Shoal Harbor. If you go in, turn right, and anchor near the islet, that's where we were!

At the end of this right-hand arm, there is a a house in ruins.

The second is behind our islet. There is a third building at the end of the left-hand arm, beyond the log dump.
There IS a nicely kept float house near our anchorage, the only resident evident while we were there.

We saw bear on shore of OUR arm, but on our dinghy tour, this beach was around a corner.
He looked up at a big dinghy that got there before us.

He goes back to scrounging.

But, the added traffic, and the other couple's excitement and then voices apologizing to us for cutting in front of us
 obviously make the guy nervous. 

Though nearly every boat in every anchorage seems to put out a crab trap, many places are 'fished out'. Al got one keeper from our two pots. He calls that a snack.

If you've been following our blog through previous years, you know that we love the swallows and the swallows love us! After a big flock swooped and chattered around us for quite a time, this one got left behind. He was there, all alone, a good 15 minutes before he flew away. We figure he was a youngster that was tired by the pace of the flock. Hope he found the way home!

We noticed this shipwreck when we came in at low tide, but the day we left the tide was even lower.
Al says it looks like it has perhaps been 'run over'.

We enjoyed our time of rest and rejuvenation in Shoal Harbour. Except that the vacation from the internet caused us to miss friends heading south from Alaska. We learned later that they had gone right past the harbor while we were there. Darn! We even had the radio on a few days, which we don't usually.

Visiting Billy

Before setting out on this season's cruising, we bought and read the book 'Full Moon, Flood Tide' by Bill Proctor and Yvonne Maximchuk. Once we reached the Broughtons we also purchased 'Heart of the Raincoast' by Alexandra Morton and Billy Proctor, and 'Tide Rips & Back Eddies' by Bill Proctor and Yvonne Maximchuk. 

One of our top 'must visit' stops this summer was to meet Billy Proctor, icon of the Broughtons.

Billy's boat, Ocean Dawn, at the dock in Proctor Bay.

If you look closely, you can see the mouthful of insects Mama is ready to feed her quite patient babies.

They've still got some baby fuzz.

Up the ramp and to the left, and there he is -- holding court! He's even smiling for the camera.
His dog, Buster, is less impressed.

Billy has quite a collection! One of my favorites are the trading beads. I have never seen any before.

There is a fish pond out back.

And a logger's cabin Billy built from a single drift cedar log.

Inside. Spartan furnishings, but being full-time boat dwellers ourselves,
we can see there is room for everything that is necessary.

From here, we walk the trail to Pierre's Echo Bay Marina and fetch a few groceries. That is one busy place! There is a lot of traffic (people). Billy says 50-60 people a day visit him at this time of year. Still, since I saw a photo of a black bear at the doorstop of the cabin, I make sure lots of conversation takes place on the trail, just in case.

T'sadzis'nukame

It is a beautiful name, pronounced by our guide Liz.

In guidebooks and on charts, its English name is New Vancouver. Liz doesn't know where that name came from.

But this settlement was the dream and purpose of her father, Chief Ki'ki'klala (Bill Glendale). For millennia their people's territory was Knight Inlet. In the '60's the village dispersed when the government stopped sending teachers for the school. Families moved away to keep intact.

There is a  marina, with power, and spring water, showers and laundry. They have hosted large canoe/kayak groups with ample space for many tents. There are over a dozen houses, an office, a small store, and the traditional long house. Summer brings students home. We enjoyed the friendly dogs, and seeing a few cats on porches.

Liz said that many who visit find it to be a spiritual experience. And we had a moment together when she told us her father had recently died. Many of his personal items are usually displayed in the long house, but during the year of mourning they are in his treasure box. For us, it is a reason to visit again.

Out of respect, I took only a few photos, but with permission.

The long house was built as a replica to the one his grandfather had built. Chief milled all the building material himself.
(The friendliest dog is even posing)

We stepped into the long house, and I took a deep breath, and said 'Aaahhhh, it smells so good!' Cedar and wood smoke. Another sister, Molly, came to visit with us in the long house too. We told them we had traveled to the end of Knight Inlet, where we had anchored. They told how they go there each year to prepare gleetna from the oolichan fish. They had been there just a month before we were there.

We turned around and saw that the house posts of the entrance were grizzly bears. And we mentioned that we had seen the grizzlies on Knight Inlet at Glendale Cove. Liz said 'That's our family name -- Glendale!' I hadn't put that together until that point.

Molly had also told us of a visit by a grizzly to their settlement three years ago. The bear had found their plum tree and climbed into it and broken a branch. And not just a wimpy branch -- and her hands showed a good 8-inch diameter. She said, 'When he stood up, he was nearly as tall as the tree!' We had seen black bears throughout the islands, but I was just amazed that a grizzly would wander so far from the mainland.

It was a pleasant evening, with sea gulls all lined up on the breakwater,
and the sun racing the clouds to shine on us.

A heron pauses from preening.

A golden hour, and silhouettes.

A Peaceful Morning

The fog snuggles the trees and creeps onto the water, hiding the shoreline.

A short time later, the sun pops through and casts a golden light.

BUT............ listen.

Simoom to Kwatsi Bay

The morning we were leaving Simoom, I woke up before 5AM. It wasn't until later that I realized I had been invited to a square dance.

An eagle hunter has a nice quite view from the point.

And here comes a TREE, ghosting down the sound.

From a distance it didn't look like much, but it is coming awfully close, and the tide is turning!

It is a full tree, as long as Viking Star. I woke Al when I feared it might get caught in our anchor chain, but it did a simply do-si-do, a full circle around the boat, and then settles on shore.

After breakfast, I noticed a couple of red areas on my wrist. Al thought perhaps I burned myself, but they were not painful, and you usually are aware if you had been burned. But a short time later these blisters had raised, and it was NOW painful and itchy. No idea what caused them. Five+ days later, they are finally deflating.

Deep Sea Bluff, the entrance to Tribune  Channel

Lacy Falls. The guidebooks say to visit in June to see it at its best. This is the last day of June, and it looks like it has about run out.  We didn't come back to see it again after the hard rain that fell while we were at the Kwatsi Bay Marina.

A shot of sunshine when we arrived. We loved this place!