Haunted Yard

Some neighbors a few blocks away put up a lot of house and yard decorations for most of the major holdiays. They had lots of lights at Christmas and some figures at Easter. Now they are going all out for Halloween, with a big banner that reads “Haunted Yard.”

At first they only put up the skeletons and gallows (and guillotine for us francophiles) and made it look like a graveyard. They lit it up with some lights, and I thought they had already done too much work, considering how much I like Halloween:

But then today, they filled the yard with grotesquely costumed mannequins all over the yard. They set out several veritable dioramas of witches, monsters, and ghouls. I talked to a lady working on the setup, and she said they invite people to come and walk through. There was also a large awning tent covered in black plastic, and I gather they have some sort of haunted house set up in there with spaghetti guts and grape eyeballs to feel:

It’s late already, but if you want to see it, it’s on Lanakila Street in the Wailua Houselots. It must be a success because we can actually hear people screaming over in that direction!

Unhappy Halloween

I’m a sort of Halloween Grinch, especially here in Hawaii where the season just doesn’t fit. There’s a certain aspect of facing death and pushing oneself into fearful situations that I find meaningful, but all the fake fright and ugly decorations seem so contrived. For example, it just seems trite to wish someone a “happy Halloween.” Then there’s the whole costume effect that causes people to go a bit wild, but that seems like it more fun during carnival. I guess Halloween has taken the place of carnival in America, although Mardi Gras is making a comeback.

Here on Kauai, it just doesn’t feel like Halloween. It’s still hot, summer is barely winding down, the sky is still mostly blue, and everything is even more green in the winter. I can understand the orange and black colors in a misty New England forests, but here they just don’t match the mood. We even went swimming in the ocean today, but come to think of it we did get a scare: we saw a school of fish jumping out of the water, which was murky, and I was afraid that might mean there was a predator around.

Anyways, I don’t want to steal Halloween for anyone, especially the children, so we carved two jack-0-lanterns and are giving away candy tonight. Just to show we can have fun on Halloween, the first is a Hawaiian jack-o-lantern, a papaya getting a tan in the pineapple patch:

The second is a traditional orange pumpkin, though I was happy to see it was grown in Hawaii and not shipped from the mainland:

Old Trail Rediscovered

As an avid hiker and explorer on Kauai, I’m always on the lookout for a new trail. So when I heard there might be a path down to the Wailua River that joined up with the kayaker’s trail to Secret Falls, I had to check it out.

Known as the Old Cart Trail, it is an old access trail on state land that was never developed or maintained as a trail, probably because it only goes down to the river, which can be dangerous to cross. It begins across the street from the Nounou-Kuamo’o trailhead on Kuamo’o about 2 miles inland from the circle road. There is a locked vehicle gate and an open pedestrian access, as shown in the following photo:

The right-of-way is very overgrown with weeds and the itchy buffalo grass, but there is a faint use trail that goes through. Then you need to find you way through some bamboo, still going straight with a fence on your left. Eventually, you can’t get through the bamboo so you need to walk right next to the fence on the left. At the end of the fence, you’re at the top of a small ravine going straight down to the river. On the left of the ravine is a trail, and after climbing over a few trunks and branches, it turns into a wide trail that curves left and descends into the river valley.

After a while, this nice trail disappears in the forest, near a place where this vine has created a perfect corkscrew and severly stunted it’s host tree. At this point, you want to turn right and head down towards the river through the tangled branches of the hau trees. Try to remember your path so you can retrace your steps on the way out.

Depending on what path you chose through the hau, you should reach the river within a few minutes. Then you follow it upstream until you see the gauging station on the other side:

The trail to Secret Falls goes upstream along the river, right next to the gauging station. You’ll probably need to take your shoes off and use a stick to cross the river, but do not cross if the river is above your knees. Once across, follow the trail to the right about a tenth of a mile until you cross two small streams. Then climb over an embankment and follow the trail up the side stream to Secret Falls. Retrace your steps to the trailhead.

In summary, I would say that kayaking is a much more enjoyable way to reach the waterfall, and this trail should only be attempted by the adventurous who don’t mind getting scratched by the overgrown brush and who know how to cross the river safely.

WARNING: crossing rivers and swimming in waterfalls are dangerous activities. Rivers may sweep you away easily and can flood quickly to trap you on the other side. Waterfalls sometimes carry rocks and branches with fatal consequences and the nearby cliffs are unstable. Exercise caution and proceed at your own risk.

SHARK!

We finally saw a shark here on Kauai, right at our favorite swimming beach. And not just one, but two. However, they were both small young ones that had washed up dead in one of the storms last week. They were drying out on the sand and being eaten by crabs and insects, and it was rather sad to see such a beautiful animal like this.

Surprisingly, they were both scalloped hammerhead sharks, which I think of as a rare animal but is in fact quite common in Hawaii. They are called scalloped because of the rounded bumps on the leading edge of the “hammer” and named mano kihikihi in Hawaiian. It does appear that a hammerhead shark will attack humans, but more for protection than food, and not with the deadly consequences of other sharks, due to their smaller mouth.

We have heard of a non-fatal shark attack at Wailua beach, one source interviews the surfer who said it was about 75 yards/meters from shore and was probably mistaken for a turtle, but it is not listed at hawaiisharks.com. I doubt that sharks would come closer to the beach where we swim.

The shark in this picture is about 18 inches (45 cm) long:

Tuesday Must Be Blog Day

It seems like I don’t get around to posting the weekend’s stories on Monday, so I tell myself I really have to do it on Tuesday. Then anything noteworthy that happens all week gets put off ’til the weekend, and on the weekend I’m too busy to blog. So here is the old standby, the weekly sunrise photo. This is from last week, because it’s been rainy in the mornings yesterday and today.