I have to admit I’m a bit jealous. Somebody just tipped me off to another blog about Kauai, and it turns out to be mostly about the beaches, trails and nature in general. In other words, what I would be writing about if I could be there. It’s called:
Despite the title and various claims on the website, it’s all about Kauai for now. And not only are there all the classic tourist places, what caught my eye were the off-trail places such as Hihimanu, the rope-assisted vertical scramble above Hanalei.
My only gripe is that the format is short and the photos are small. There really isn’t much detail about Hihimanu, although that could be on purpose, but I would’ve liked a photo of the ropes and the mud. Or maybe that’s just because I want to know about trail conditions.
The Kauai Trailblazer is heavily and exclusively promoted on the site, which makes me think it must be written by the authors, Jerry and Janine Sprout. It wouldn’t surprise me if they are publishing their photos and notes from all the excursions they did to write the book. Since they have books for the other islands, I suppose they’ll get around to those as well. Which reminds me, I should write my overall positive review of their guide book, it’s positive overall (and I flog it on my bookstore as well).
Actually, this website somewhat alleviates one gripe I have about their book being all in black and white, which just doesn’t convey a true sense of the place, or any place in the tropics.
Fortunately, the write-ups on the blog do go beyond touristy descriptions and plain trail write-ups. I imagine the authors are also on-island regularly, because they do have some “live” coverage of events. Since I like mud and local conditions, I appreciated their recent post about the road to Polihale being closed:
Source: hawaiiphotobank.blogspot.com
On top of that, they live up to their subtitle and post daily, another reason for me to be jealous. And so they’ve earned a spot on my blogroll in the right-hand column.