Maui Red Sand Beach

Dennis had told me about this secret beach in Hana and stuff. It’s pretty. Not sure anyone would ever swim at it what with the rocks and all. There’s a journey vs. destination story here as well.

The beach is sort of on private property or requires you to cross through private property or something. There’s a hotel there that has signs posted that declaim any responsibility for you killing yourself while trying to get there. Not without reason.

A few photos I guess:

The beach itself:

And I got about 50 more photos that are some variation on that. The tree is in all of them. Seriously, like *all* of them.

On the hike:

• It’s not very far — maybe 3/4 mile from the place where you park.
• But: the trail is pretty dodgy. There’s one part where the footing is poor (sandy and loose pebbles), and the trail is narrow (ca. 12 inches) and slanting off the edge of a cliff (20-foot drop). It’s about a 10-foot stretch, but that’s about all it takes.
• I was wearing flip-flops, which did not grant me goat-like powers of ground adhesion.
• Ended up gashing the side of my foot.
• Alternately, there’s a trail spur that bypasses this section. It takes you off the cliff and down to the beach, then goes back up onto the ledge above. Would’ve been smart. Would have.
• And then coming back up, we came up one trail too early. This too-early trail goes to the cemetery and is steeper than you want it to be. With loose, sandy pebbles.

Cemetery is like this:

For some reason all the stones had Japanese writing on them. On the interesting scale, I’m guessing the story behind that (unknown to me) rates a 3.

bkd

PS, This was a purely Google-driven headline. Thanks, search algorithms: you’ve destroyed blog post headlines forever.

Big Wave Day in La Jolla

Couple weeks ago SoCal had all these big storms. Big storms resulted in big waves, so I tagged along on a trip out to the beach to look at the big waves. Unfortunately didn’t bring my real camera, so all I had was the cell phone, but it was kind of cool out there, especially with the big waves, birds, and out-hanging seals. Not navy seals, just regular ones.

La Jolla Cove with waves and palm tree shadow.

My brother chooses not to look while his wife and kids decide whether or not they want to jump off the cliff.

It's your legal right to use this beach regardless of the presence of seals, no matter what the seal rights people's signs tell you..

There were also birds like this there.

And when they fly, they look like this.

Would’ve been better with my real camera. I was sort of just getting sick that day also, which — well, it’s a nice, all-encompassing fall-back excuse.

bkd