Hawaii – Page 2 – SarahRuthSeeks

Big Island Volcano

January 12, 2022 No Comments

My friend Jess and I really wanted to visit Big Island (aka Hawaii Island) to see the volcano erupting so we planned a trip together. There’s no telling if the volcano will actually be erupting or not, so we planned to do a lot of other adventures along the way and hoped to see the lava. Both of us were afraid to look at the eruption status all week; we were holding our breaths. Then, Jess checked the morning of our trip and saw a report that it had stopped… boy, were we disappointed. We decided to put it in the schedule anyway.

We checked in to our AirBnB which was about fifteen minutes from the prime viewing point. We headed there around 9:15pm. The viewing point was down a little path off what was crater rim drive. Crater rim drive closed in 2008 during eruptions. It’s mainly intact on the part we walked aside from a big crack. This is the sky as you get closer to the crater… we were trying not to get our hopes up but it was hard not to!

We’re getting closer…

And then you see the lava and you’re completely in awe of it. It’s the most surreal thing I’ve ever experienced… like you’re in a museum or a movie. You can hear the cracking sounds the volcano makes.

I’ve been asked if you can feel the warmth. I will clarify that we are actually really far away… thankfully. The pictures above are zoomed and cropped.

Regardless, as we walked back to the car we felt it get about ten degrees cooler. When we were watching the lava, I don’t remember feeling cool, but at the car I did.

Next time, I’ll remember my actual zoom lens (I grabbed the wrong one, face palm!), my tripod, and a chair. I’d love to video the people walking down and their reactions… it’s priceless, especially the children. We completely lucked out. I took a series of videos which you can watch on my playlist below. I haven’t watched them all, skip to 47 seconds in of the first video. I’m still working on my videoing skills, ha! The second video is pretty neat as well, just let the first plat to the end. Definitely could use a tripod.

We went back the next day and it wasn’t as “explosive” should I say. However, still worth the effort. It would’ve been considered amazing had we not seen day one, but now I guess I’m spoiled!

Man, I’m not sure any travel adventure will ever top this.

I did get nervous at some points… like what if this really did blow up big time? But it’s one of those things I guess you just look past. I could’ve sat with a bag of popcorn for forever watching it. If the pictures worth a thousand words, being there is worth a million.

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Ho’okua’aina

November 14, 2021 No Comments

Today we went to Ho’okua’aina, a kalo (taro) farm in Kailua. We helped with weeding the lo’i, kalo fields.

We started with learning abouth the aina (land) and kalo plant in the hale. We sat in a circle and gave our names and which aina we claim as our home. We also talked about why we were there, and my answer was because I wanted to learn more about the land and give back to Hawaiians as a small thank you and out of respect for being able to live here.

Then the work began! The mud kalo mounds are surrounded by moats or trenches. These can get up to waist deep; the ones we were working in made it up to my knee, and thigh for some of the shorter people joining us.

We pulled up weeds and put them in buckets or off to the side as best we could.

There were all sorts of animals… frogs, tadpoles, and ducks were the most common that we saw. I attempted to keep the mud off of things but that became a lost cause in short order. My camera survived, however, and we were fortunate to be able to shower most of the mud off there before getting in our cars.

What a day this was! I gave my camera a good sponge bath after this. I think I’ll go back but more prepared this time for just how fast things get muddy. We have a lot of people who want to go again, so I think there will be more.

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North Shore Waves

November 9, 2021 No Comments

A friend of a friend is in Hawaii (this seems to happen a lot) and she wanted to go see the waves on the North Shore because there were 15-20ft swells. So, we ventured up there last Wednesday. We stopped at my favorite Acai bowl spot, Hale’iwa bowls for a quick lunch, and then tried to view turtles at Laniakea. Turns out that during high tide and high swells there isn’t much room left for turtles, so there weren’t any out to play.

Then we ventured up to Sunset beach where she was told there would be a lot of surfers. However, on our way there we passed a beach park that was really active. We kept going anyway, but there was next to no one at sunset beach… so we backtracked to that busy beach and found street parking. This turned out to be the Bonzai Pipeline beach (also known as Ehukai beach). There were still only two surfers and two boogey borders and a ton of spectators. But, the waves were super impressive and fun to observe. The surfers are really far off from shore, so even as good as my zoom lens is, these are cropped which adds to the blurriness.

The surfers that were there did not surf a lot… there could be a million reasons why, but those first few pictures were a lucky grab from basically right when we sat down. So I took probably a million pictures of the waves, trying to capture the essence just right. Here are some pictures of just waves.

The white thing on this one’s head is a helmet.

This gives you better perspective of just how far away they are. There is still a lot of sand you don’t see.

Here’s a boogey boarder.

The waves created so much splash mist it looks like it’s raining.

What a sight to see. 10/10 recommend experiencing this once in your life. The swells don’t come often right now, I keep checking to see when the next one will be and it won’t be until well into November. I’m hoping Brian can make one day work, it’s just outstanding to watch. Glad Anna was there to push me to go see this one!

I recorded some video and captured good waves, you’ll see a boogey boarder at 30 ish seconds in.

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FRG Christmas Mini Photoshoots Fundraiser

November 2, 2021 No Comments

As I started taking family shoots I realized it could make a great FRG fundraiser. So I offered my time and skills to the FRG and they took me up on it! We did 15 minute increments and six families signed up over a course of two days. Let me tell you, I don’t want to edit again for a while.

I say that, but I think part of it was the location we picked (Kamehameha Beach on Hickam). It ended up being “busy” (relative term for a military beach, it was actually pretty quiet for a Hawaii beach). I had to edit out a few people and a big, blue sun shade tent out of probably 25 pictures. Phew!

Each family paid $40 and I received $20 and the FRG received $20. I gave them all edited photos of my choosing, we guaranteed three good ones but most of the time they ended up with more.

Day one ended up being one couple and we had the bench set up in a weird way, and I feel bad because it made the pictures a little misaligned. Basically, either the horizon was horizontal or the bench was horizontal. If the Horizon was, the tree looked crooked. Anyway, we ended up shifting the set up on this little patch of sand. However, by the end with the rising tide the sand bar disappeared. You can see here my horizon line is still a little crooked. I did rotate in post processing, but obviously not perfect!

I’m learning that there are limitations to the software I chose. There are basic things I wish it did, like I think other software will auto rotate for the horizon with a click of a button. I think other software can also blur faces. I chose the software I did because it uses AI to enhance photos, so I can let the algorithm take care of most of what I need. I also picked it because it’s not subscription, so I paid once and don’t have to pay monthly. It’s the part of me that doesn’t want to pay for months I didn’t use, although I’ve been using my photo editor quite often (more than I realized).

Anyway, we fixed the horizon/bench issue by moving the scenery. However, other issues were that back to the left where you see the bushes was the huge bright blue sun shade tent. Also, the bright sun made it difficult for people to open their eyes to look at me, but it was the best lighting and again best for horizon lines. All things to learn and think about!

There were a ton of great shots that came out of these sessions and the families were so much fun. I’m really proud of the work I’ve been doing and think for $40 the results were on par with the value (especially including all that editing time).

I might ask permission to share more photos, but you at least get the gist of the shoot with the above one. Great learning experience, and it’s very interesting the time difference between shooting a couple and a family. I also was worried I wouldn’t have enough poses on the bench, but we did the shaka and sometimes isolated kids and did kisses. Then we also took people away from that and did spontaneous shots like dancing, jumping, walking, etc. I felt a little weird when I ended up with so much time after a session! But they go quicker when it’s not a full on family shoot.

Super fun, but I’m so so over editing for a bit!

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Waimanalo Beach Pictures

November 2, 2021 No Comments

It’s been pretty quiet on the family photography end, both because I’ve been away and because I still don’t have a good enough self image about it to advertise (nor do I really know how to advertise). Anyway, a family posted that their photographer bailed on them, and they were having some personal family things happening that they really wanted to get these photographs done. So I replied to their post and volunteered!

She had already scoped out beaches in our area (it is not lost on me how amazing it is that we even have that option) and picked Waimanalo beach park. If you’ve been following along, I haven’t really posted much about Waimanalo (it’s where we saw sunflowers and it sits between us and the Makapu’u lighthouse). There are a lot of reasons, but mainly it’s because it’s mostly known as native Hawaiian territory. If you drive through that neighborhood you’ll see it is not at all built up, there are tons of local businesses, and there are a lot Hawaiian-esque things about it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but some native Hawaiians still have a vendetta against Americans for taking over their land and aren’t incredibly friendly with “haole“. Along one stretch of the beach park is a homeless tent city. I’m painting a really bad picture of this place, in reality it’s not like I hear of incidents happening there often. It’s just somewhere I respect is their territory. All this to say, there are really nice ballfields there and the beach itself is expansive and quiet (which makes for easy photo editing). I pulled into the parking lot closest to the tent city and decided to move to the one closest to the ballfields.

I was apprehensive to have my huge nice camera strapped to me, but once I got out and walked around and saw people of all shapes and sizes my comfort eased a bit. I started walking around and scoping things out and before long the family showed up. Really, I think it comes down to the inherent extra caution growing up as a woman has lent me to think about.

The beach itself is nice, but it doesn’t have palm trees, and the mountains are quite the distance away, so I’m not sure it’s my preferred scenery. I think it’s definitely beneficial it was so quiet, WAY less post editing to clean things up!

The family was a lot of fun. One teen that was having a little attitude about playing along, but he did just enough to capture some gems.

The sun sets behind us, so the color started to show on the clouds, which also made for some nice background. Prior to that, the sky was so bright it was getting a bit washed out. I loved their matching outfits. The little girl wanted some pictures of her and her mom hula dancing with a haku lei, that was fun! We used a huge piece of driftwood as a bench. I’m glad I got out of my comfort zone and did these in Waimanalo. They turned out great. One of the kids had been stung by a Japanese man o war and so I ran into the same issue I had with the other family; the kids were very paranoid they’d step on one on the beach. It made casual walking a bit difficult. We tried a pose with the kids faces inside a heart made by the hands of the parents. I am pretty impressed with how it turned out!

There’s so much to think about with these photoshoots! Is everyone smiling? Looking at the camera? How’s the background, where are the mountains? Are they centered? Is everyone positioned evenly?

I think I most excel at capturing the spontaneous queues, like “Let’s dance” and “3,2,1 jump!” and Shaka pictures. The more structured, perfect ones are harder for me to nail. It’ll come with time!

Also, thankfully, this mom knows how to photo edit, so although I went and did my own thing and sent her a bunch of edits (she’s super busy and still mid-pcs so doesn’t have access to all her stuff), I know she can take the raw material and edit her own way. You can tell some of my horizons aren’t even and the brightness isn’t either… it’s definitely something I’m getting better at reviewing before sending (I’ve had more sessions since this one).

This was a good warm up to what was to come with this past weekend, when I did a bunch of mini photo shoots for a fundraiser for the last boat we were on’s FRG. Post to follow!

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Haunama Bay Snorkeling

October 9, 2021 1 Comment

Haunama Bay is a state park and Nature Reserve. It is THE most popular Hawaiian tourist attraction (based on no polls but my rather my personal opinion). It’s been on my bucket list, but it’s logistically difficult to achieve, even for a local. You have to reserve tickets, which become available two days in advance. They only allow 1000 guests per day and are only open Wed to Sun. The parking lot is small and fills up quickly and costs $1 for military/local or $3 for tourists. The actual park is free for Military/local or $25 for tourists.

My friend and I hopped online a little before 7am, her on her phone and me on the computer. I had heard the trick was to aim for an off time, like 11:10am or 12:10am, so we tried those. I ended up getting us two tickets at 12:10AM. If you are military/local, you can go in any day without a reservation between 7a-8a.

The parking lot is small, so Erin and I headed over early to make sure we had time to hover for parking. We didn’t have to, and instead enjoyed walking the park a bit and enjoying the beauty of it as a whole.

Anyway, on to the fun part. After watching a 20 minute video putting the fear of God in you that you might be swept out by riptides and that you need to know how to swim, you make your way down a long pretty steep driveway to the bay. The fish were HUGE and there was a wide variety, so I saw a few I hadn’t seen in Lanikai. I could not believe how big they were, and then how close they’d get to us! The bottom left I didn’t capture fully because he was actually too close!

Erin realized she had heard the name of the Hawaiian State fish somewhere before (pictured top right, the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a fish) and it turns out it’s a song in High School Musical 2. As a going away present, she bought me a small fish identifier card. I don’t have it with me, but when I get back maybe I’ll label the fish above.

We had an awesome time.

It was definitely murky because we’re getting into rougher water season and it was high tide. So I guess in the future I’d like to pick a calmer day, but it’s hard to be choosy with the logistics as they are. Here are a few miscellaneous pics from the adventure.

I think this next one puts into scale just how much reef there was to explore.

Afterward, I was evaluating the pros and cons of Lanikai vs. Haunama snorkeling. I definitely would go back to Haunama, especially with Brian, but I have to say that for the logistics as easy as they are in Lanikai, we have a great advantage. However, it is highly photogenic, especially with two beautiful ladies.

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Hale’iwa shopping+Stonefish Grill+Laniakea Beach

October 4, 2021 No Comments

After Dole Plantation, we parked in Hale’iwa and shopped the main strip. I was impressed by the quality of the stores. I thought it would be your typical, sea side, t-shirt shops. There was like, one of those, but the rest had great items from ocean gear to clothes to house decor to jewelry. I could’ve spent a lot of money, but I ended up only buying a book called “Surfing animals alphabet” for a friend’s child. We did a first pass through the stores and made mental notes of what we might like to return to after seeing everything.

We stopped at Stonefish Grill for lunch, it was conveniently at the end of the strip, and I had a crab cake salad that was PHENOMENAL. Erin was well pleased with the steak poke. Thankfully, at the beginning where we parked there was a general store, and I bought a SD card from there to hold me over.

After lunch, we worked our way back through and committed to some purchases (after taking some time to mull them over). Then we made our way to Laniakea beach, which is known for turtles. This is a very narrow, picturesque bridge you have to pass through to get there. Some cars choose to wait for you to go through before attempting.

There’s street parking and I was excited we were able to grab a spot. I told Erin not to get too excited, I didn’t know how often turtles were actually there. Either it was our lucky day or they love this spot, but we must’ve seen at least five turtles on the beach and another five in the water. In this next picture alone, you can see three.

This whole day was the epitome of Hawaii, but this certainly was a highlight.

You are supposed to stay 10ft away, but there were a lot of people who definitely weren’t. We stayed off this coral/rock, because it was super slippery anyway and I was still recovering from my butt fall. The pictures are very cropped, I am pretty confident we stayed 10ft away. This is a picture of the beach where you can see the section of reef/rock and how much space there is between the ocean and sand.

There were a ton of fun to observe eating and letting the waves just take them back into the water and push them back up. I loved this stop.

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Pu’u Ma’eli’eli Trail

September 16, 2021 1 Comment

My new army wife friend agreed to go on a recon adventure to scope out hike logistics for a hike called “Old Pali Rd”. I want to host the hike for one of my spouse groups. We had heard mixed comments about parking etc, so we went to find out ourselves. Turns out you basically drive through a jungle to get to the trail head.

There is parking at a golf club, it costs $10 and they accept the last car at 3pm (they close the gate to leave at 4pm). There is off street parking on the way up, however, there have been MANY car break ins. It’s a weird and annoying thing in Hawaii… there are signs everywhere not to leave valuables in your car. There are many philosophies, like leave your door unlocked and leave money for them to take just so they don’t smash your windows… Anyway, she had just had her window replaced (reason undisclosed) and it took six months to replace, so we decided to play it safe and come up with a plan B. After some discussion, we decided to go to Pu’u Ma’eli’eli Trail. Translated from Hawaiian, Puʻu Maʻeliʻeli means “digging hill.”

This parking is a little better, you park at a McDonald’s (the dinning room is currently closed) and walk down a pretty busy street (think RT. 20) behind the guard rail. Mind you, she had three kids (9, 4, and 2). So needless to say I didn’t take pictures of this part, because I was too concentrated on the kids staying far from cars or the ditch next to us.

When we first started up, it was really steep and muddy and there were ropes to use on the side to help. This is looking down from the top of it. The picture does not do it justice.

There were lots of interesting plants, including wild orchids.

The little one wanted in on touching and feeling the plants.

The foliage was very diverse on our way up!

The kids did really great. It was honestly really helpful to have them slowing us down (Look at this leaf! My foot is stuck!) because I never felt out of breath and my lungs did great. There’s also just an innocence and fearlessness that makes me feel more comfortable.

I absolutely LOVE this next picture. Note the dog tucked into the bag.

Unfortunately, they did slow us down enough and with the slow start we had to turn around before the very top… the pace we were going, if we made it to the top it would’ve been getting dangerously dark to be “sliding” back down that “mud slide” as we called it. We didn’t completely miss the views as there were a couple lookout spots on our way.

We turned around right before a really steep, rooted part that looked like it’d take a bit to get up and down. The kids were understandably disappointed… It’s just that I envisioned us trying to hold phones with lights getting down that first steep muddy slippery part at the beginning and it being really slow and tedious. I hope they’ll learn to forgive me so we can go again. I think they overall had fun, though! We sure got muddy.

This is my friend. She is fearless and strong and a ton of fun to be around.

Unfortunate we couldn’t count it as “done”, but I’m looking forward to going back and trying again. When we got to our cars it started pouring, so I think we made the right decision. We will be back! Here are a couple of me she grabbed.

I’m really proud of myself for doing this. It was my first hike without Brian, who has been my security blanket for the last 8 months of recovery during activities. It took some courage and a lot of ignoring my feelings and fear to not back out. It was so, so rewarding.