Oh my what a day! We traveled over 200 miles today total. If you don’t know already, we are staying in Kailua Kona Hawaii, on the northwest coast of the Big Island in Hawaii. Yesterday was day 3 of our trip and we traveled all the way to Hilo (on the southeast coast) in search of more rain forests. The road to Hilo is probably the most awe inspiring drive I have ever taken, full of twists and turns through rain forests, water falls, towering trees and vines, elephant ears the size of a kitchen table, you name it.

A lot of weird things are said on road trips, and that’s where the title comes from! According to my mother in law, “clod hopper” is an everyday term used by millions to describe someone who is clumsy. I have never heard this term in my life and would love some insight from our readers on whether or not you have ever heard of this term! It sounds so weird doesn’t it!? So I made up my own random term, the second one in the list, which I think will catch on like wild fire. Finally, blow holes was just that, a blow hole that we found on a secluded beach, where the water gets forced through a crack or hole in the rocks and shoots straight up.

The Secluded Pool on the Wailuku River

There’s no way to describe what it took to get this shot. This pool was located at the Wailuku River State Park, at the supposed Boiling Pots section. When you walk up to the park, there is the typical chain link fence that holds back probably 90% of the tourists that come through. If you know my wife Kristin, you’ll know that she is a little dare devil. Whenever we get to a location, within seconds she is hundreds of yards away climbing up or down some place where she shouldn’t be. This time was no different, while I was trying to find a decent vantage point for a shot, Kristin found a hidden path through the brush that almost literally went straight down a cliff face. I turned my tripod and camera into a walking stick again and followed my wife down the cliff. I have never in my life tried walking down something this steep! There were sections of rock that dropped down 3 or 4 feet at a time, and you just had to jump and hope to land on solid footing. That may not sound like a very daring feat, but try doing it with a massive camera and tripod in your hands. I nearly lost my footing several times, but it was worth it. We eventually came to the boiling pots which were just collection pools that built up on the their way to the ocean. We came to this point eventually and we were all just speechless.

The Village of Laupahoehoe

We found this spot by accident on our way back home for the night. We driving along the top of a cliff by the sea when I spotted a massive rainbow! My father in law Dana saw it too but the girls didn’t believe there was one. So we took a sharp right down some one lane road to find it and suddenly we couldn’t turn around. We just had to go to bottom and come back up because it was so narrow. That road led us to the historic village of Laupahoehoe which means “leaf lava,” for the leaf shaped lava around the coastline. In 1946 the village was struck by 4 major waves by a tsunami that completely wiped out this village. The school building was hit the hardest and 20 students and four teachers drowned in the ocean from being swept out by the wave. Some surviving students were found days later still treading water in the ocean.

I think HDR is the only good way to capture a rainbow. The camera’s sensor freaks out at the sight of one, so to capture it you would have to drastically underexpose the scene to capture the light from the rainbow. Which renders the entire scene (except the rainbow) as extremely dark or pure black. This image was a beast to process, as the HDR process brought in a tone of hazy yellow light around the rainbow. I had to get pretty creative to bring back in the blue sky around the rainbow itself. This is quickly becoming one my favorites, I hope you agree

P.S. Don’t forget to check my mother in laws blog, Katie’s Rose Cottage, for snap shots and other updates from our stay here!