Tag Archives: Hawaii

February 11, 2015 · 5:35 am

Waimea Canyon, Kauai

Waimea Canyon

By Grand Canyon standards Waimea Canyon may seem rather puny, but by Pacific island standards it’s gigantic. Yes, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles/446 kilometers long, 18 miles/29 kilometers wide, and some 6,000 feet/1,800 meters deep, but Waimea Canyon is still impressive. Waimea Canyon measures 10 miles/16 kilometers in length and is half as deep as the Grand Canyon — 3,000 feet/900 meters.

Waimea Canyon

Besides, Waimea is actually green. The Grand Canyon can’t make that claim.

Waimea Canyon

It’s also black, brown, and red — black from the lava basalt that created the island, brown from exposure of the basalt to the elements, and red from the iron in the basalt that has since succumbed to erosion and oxidization.

Waimea Canyon

Here’s an example of Waimea Canyon really showing its colors:

Waimea Canyon

And now for today’s photo gallery of this magnificent canyon. Click on any image below the bring up the slide show.

Waimea Canyon

One last look back toward the canyon

By the way, if you’re reading this and other material authored by me on The Destinary website, this post was not “Posted on (fill in the date) | By destinary” as they’ve been erroneously claiming; this material was in fact reposted. The Destinary have also been claiming the right to do so, without links back to the original and without full attribution (“by RDoug” and a nonworking link is not proper attribution) with a rather bizarre interpretation of U.S. copyright law in which they claim I’m responsible for changing my RSS feed settings so that they cannot skim my material for commercial purposes. That would make reading my blog less convenient for you, which I’m not willing to do. As such, I’ll be running this little diatribe on all travel related posts until they cease and desist, along with this:

Final note: Considering this is a site run by a travel agency, you may want to rethink doing business with them.

1 Comment

Filed under Photography, R. Doug Wicker, travel

Tagged as cruise, Hawaii, Kauai, Oosterdam, photography, travel, travel photography, Waimea Canyon

February 9, 2015 · 5:35 am

Kauai — Almost Rhymes with “Hawaii”

Pilot boat approaching MS Oosterdam in Nawiliwili Bay, Kauai

Our final Hawaiian Islands stop was on Saturday, May 3, in the Kauai port of Nawiliwili. But we weren’t destined to spend much time here, as Ursula had us scheduled for yet another excursion.

Nawiliwili Bay, Kauai

After we docked Ursula and I headed out to join up with our tour group. From there we boarded our tour bus and headed first to the Koloa district for a view of the famous Spouting Horn, which didn’t disappoint too badly despite less than optimal tides and surf for maximum spouting.

Spouting Horn

If we had been luckier in our timing we might have seen this:

Wikipedia image of Spouting Horn from the article linked above

The shoreline here is very picturesque, with black lava rocks and beautiful blue waters.

Kauai Lava Shoreline

While strolling over to Spouting Horn we ran across this future KFC serving pictured below. He seemed very far away from South Carolina, but then Gamecocks really do have a lousy sense of direction. They keep winding up in Columbia when they actually wish they were in Clemson.

How a University of South Carolina fan appears just before getting plucked in Death Valley by the Clemson Tigers

I’ll get to our goal on this excursion in a moment, but first I’d like to say a word about a wonderful place where we stopped on our way back to the ship. That would be the Kauai Coffee Company. No, they’re not today’s sponsor. They’re just good enough for me to mention that you should stop there and sample their island-grown coffees. You won’t be disappointed, and you’ll be bringing back several varieties of their flavored and unflavored coffees both for yourself and your friends.