And it is beautiful.

Ugh, I’m tired and my legs feels heavy today. For our weekly trip we decided to do something different and instead of traversing the entire North Shore on Monday we decided to wait till Tuesday (because of the MLK, Jr. holiday traffic) and specifically visit the western most point of the island (Ka’ena Point). It was overcast and voggy with no trades, but since we were heading to the point, I assumed (correctly) that we were going to get some wind. So with all that in mind, we took the walk/hike (3 – 4 miles out) to the Ka’ena Point Costal Reserve (3 miles in length). This point is quite special in Hawaiian lore for being the spot where the recently departed and their ancestors met. After death, the spirits of the deceased jumped from this point of Oahu into their afterlife.

I love the North Shore and this passage to Ka’ena Point, past Mokule’ia and Camp Erdman, is a favorite spot of mine. I always feel like there is closure to our trip as we hit the end of the paved road with only a dirt road to continue on by either foot or 4-wheel drive, and I admit to feeling the fullness and vastness of the ocean and lil’ old me. (The panoramic pictures are taken with my Nikon Coolpix S9100 – it was on easy mode and all I had to do was press the button and pan the camera from one end to the other. I could take either 180 or 360 degree photos.).

This is the second time that we’ve taken this walk. The first time was more painful because of two reasons. 1) I miscalculated the length of the walk (I thought it was shorter) and the heat. 2) I was wearing my regular shoes after only wearing my toe shoes for months. I had blisters between my toes!

Thankfully this time I wore my toe shoes and we broke up the scenery a little by taking pictures and we walked as much as we could over the reef versus the dirt path.

It took us about two hours to get to the Coastal Reserve but it was beautiful and here are some of the pics along the way.

I was messing around a little (experimenting with the panoramic feature) and this picture was one of my favorites, so I thought I’d share it here too.

The pics in this next series I thought did a good job of showing how different the shore looked depending on where you were in the three miles it took to get to the Reserve.

I still can’t decide whether or not it was a good idea to go along the shore instead of keep to the dirt path. The main pro was obviously the view but a huge con was that it was harder and more rugged, so there were certain points where you had to find your way back to the dirt path because it wasn’t possible to cross otherwise, unless you wanted to swim, which I would not recommend in this area at all.

If you decide to try this hike, there are things worth keeping your eyes open for, one is this house up on the hill. It is obviously a state building but it’s high enough up and far enough in that it gives you hope that your trip to the reserve is almost within site.

A little after the house, if you are closer to the beach, you can see the reserve’s enclosure and the place that the 4-wheel drive vehicles park before they, too, have to walk to get into the reserve.

Once you get past the vehicles and before you enter the enclosure, there are signs giving you the low down of the rules and some information on the Reserve (first pic of post). Unfortunately I was having some problems with my Coolpix (boo) and I switched to my D80, the D80 ISO was set high so I could get better water pictures but added a graininess to the rest of my pics that I’m not too happy with.

As soon as we went through the gate, I looked up and saw over a dozen birds flying above us. (The last picture you might need to click on to get a better view of the birds. They are small.)

I admit I was slightly worried, “The Birds” came to mind. Then we saw one nesting. It looked so unusual, I love the eyes.

They are big and so beautiful in the sky.

At this point we were there a little over an hour and I was getting worried that I was not going to see any marine wildlife. But I was not to be disappointed. Further off, where the waves shouldn’t have been breaking, I thought I saw some whitewash. I wasn’t sure what was in it exactly because it was pretty far off and I thought there was something black inside of it. I was thinking monk seal, dolphin, shark . . . but it turned out to be this instead.

Whale(s)! I was so excited. I’d never seen one before and didn’t quite know what it was but we did see a lot of it’s tail flip-flopping out there so we didn’t have any doubts. Plus, he brought friends, there were three or four spouts and we saw a black and white tail in the water and two black tails.

I could have stayed there too long watching the whales but it was getting late, we didn’t have a flashlight, and I still wanted to visit my favorite turtle beach so we had to leave, but it was great. As we walked back I saw the spouting whales off in the distance. It was almost like they followed us back to our car. So awesome.

And I’m happy to report that I got to see a turtle at my favorite turtle-watching spot, so I wasn’t disappointed on any of my travels. So I admit to be sore and tired but it’s definitely a good, sore and tired.

Squire and I had another great day on the North Shore via Kailua today because we got to share it with our friend, Ipo. See picture below.

We were also lucky enough to see something new along our trek. A Hawaiian monk seal beached itself on shore and we were able to get pretty close to it and watch it move towards the water. (Taken with IPhone 4s video)

Those were the highlights for me, but we did a fair share of eating also, which isn’t the norm. We started off with breakfast at Cinnamon’s because Boot’s and Kimo’s was closed for maintenance, then Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck for lunch and BBQ corn on the cob (island style), and we topped it off with Matsumoto’s shaved ice for dessert. It’s safe to say that I ate enough for today and I had a great many things to look at and take pictures of to make the day breeze on by. Here are some of my favorite shots with my little nikon coolpix s9100 (and I’m seriously loving it).

Here we stopped at the only Macadamia Farm left in Oahu and looked through their shop. When we went around back we saw some chickens and small boutiques. There was a little pond with some fish in it and at least a dozen frogs. I took a lot of pictures of them but I’m not sure I should share my pictures of frogs, I admit that they aren’t that photogenic, but here’s a pic of one of the water lilies there.

When we left there we happened to be passing a park area that had a few people gathered looking at something on the beach, Ipo and I noticed that it was a beached Hawaiian Monk Seal (endangered) and quickly yelled at Squire to pull over so we could see him in all his glory.

Next stop was Sunset and then we made our way to one of my favorite beach stops (Pipeline), the waves are awesome and as they come crashing down they (for lack of a better way of explaining it) crescendo back into the air. Here are some of the shots of the beach (one of my favorite types of shots – low to the ground) and also a couple with Squire in them with the back drop of the waves and their crescendo(s).

One of our last stops before we made our way to Haleiwa was Shark’s Cove, named as such because of the shape of the reef. We have always seen it but because it’s a one-way entrance, if you miss it, you don’t have an opportunity to get into the park again unless you turn around and try to find it again. So we’ve always continued on without stopping. Today we made the turn and I took some pictures of the fish in the water but I liked this picture particularly of Shark’s Cove, so here it is.

And no trip to the North Shore is complete unless I see turtles, so here we are and we were lucky enough to see this guy make his way back into the sea (video at the beginning).

What a perfect day to share with a friend.