Trees growing sideways

Denise said that we were going to take it easy today, but I think she forgot! She was pretty tired by the end of the day so I thought I'd jump in and write today.

We started our wanderings by visiting Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, a place of refuge. It's a National Historic park, although Denise seemed to spend more time trying to capture palm trees and reflections with her camera than she did with reading about the history of the site.

Then, we headed to South Point, the southernmost point in the United States. Do you know that the wind is so strong there that the trees grow sideways? (Well, not really - but there is a distinct sideways direction to the tops of the trees.) We stopped at South Point for a very short amount of time there, and then we headed to the jumping off point for the hike to the green sand beach.

Oh! Here's a shot of one of those one-lane two-way roads, and another of the view from South Point...





We bounced along dirt tracks of bright yellow, sharing space with other walkers and with occasional 4-wheel drive vehicles. The tracks were anything but smooth, and definitely not straight. It took us longer to get there than to get back because Denise kept wandering off to the side, heading closer to the ocean. There isn't a single track but a series of winding tracks so I'm not sure there is a straight path to get there anyway. It was a good wander.

The colors of the day were amazing. As we peered down a steep cliff to the water at South Point - the ocean was so blue! There was bright green groundcover, slashes of orange/yellow dirt, black rocks, and yes, a sand beach wearing the color green.

We saw the beach from on high; the beach is at the bottom of a cinder cone and the slope looked quite steep and very slide-y.

--- Rover