Sept 9 – 6 AM flight leaving Phx Sky Harbor to Kona, with a stop over in Oakland.
We should arrive at 12:10. At the same time, Hurricane Kay is slowly moving up the west coast of Baja California! I am glad we are flying through Oakland and not LA as this might not have an affect on our flight plans. We shall see!
Alanah is coming and will spend the weekend before returning to Arizona on Monday.
I have a list of the things I want to get accomplished this trip, and a list of things we need to pick up in Kona at various places.
Everything is the same as I left it back in August.
One thing I was glad to see, was that the burned out planter resulted in nothing more. That was a strange ordeal on the morning I left, to see that planter on fire!
The geckos welcomed us back as we set out the kitchen supplies under the gazebo.
We spent most of the weekend out by the ocean.
We took a scenic drive along the overpass road from Naalehu to Pahala up past the cemetary.
We came across an old concrete bridge over an interesting creek/waterway.
After Alanah returned to the mainland, I got busy on my “to do” list. I went up to the Ahi lot and made contact with a contractor who was clearing the next lot on Ahi Road.
Turned out, it was the lot next to ours, so I made a deal with him to continue clearing on the road up to the opposite side of our lot.
He had a brush chipper attachment for his trackhoe that really does a number on the standing vegetation. Within two hours, he had cleared the trees in the 100 feet in front of our lot.
Much to my chagrin, there were two additional vehicles buried under those trees, and clearing the trees exposed the abandoned trucks. Additionally, there was another truck, an suv, and a station wagon at the edge of the property line, but on the road. There is even a frame for a trailer – but no axle!
Using the blade on the front of the track hoe, he pushed these three vehicles back into the trees on Ahi Road until they were past my property line.
Then he picked up the two junk trucks and moved them back as well, piling one on top of the other!
There are seven waterlines running along Ahi Road on my side of the road. I gathered them together and covered them with sand to protect them.
Then I had a load of gravel brought in and dumped on the road at the top of the driveway location.
Before pushing this gravel down the hill where I planned to create a driveway, I gathered all the loose garbage – car parts, an old mattress, an office chair, a screen door frame, etc., and piled them next to the hill in the driveway location.
Making sure the water lines were protected, I had another dump truck of gravel, dirt, and rocks dumped over the hill on top of the garbage.
Not enough – so I had another load brought as well.
Then I had the guy with the tractor (Shannon of Kaholhoe Construction out of Milolii) move the first load of gravel onto the other two loads and grade them into a downward slope.
Over the next few weeks, I piled all the limbs I cut from clearing select portions of the Ahi lot at the bottom of the new driveway.
Periodically, I would run my chainsaw through the pile to reduce them to pieces less than six inches long. This is building up a pile that is pretty solid. I am hoping that this green vegetation will give me a base for the driveway. It also provides me a place to get rid of it all.
In my spare time, I contacted Greg in Mark Twain Estates who has a backhoe, and arranged for him to come start digging the footings for the house. I do not have a permit yet, but the footings can be dug and the forms set before the permit. I just can’t pour the concrete until afterwards.
The first thing he did was to clear away the loose rocks, vegetation and the lone guava tree.
Then he switched to the hammer and began pounding on the rocks.
After two days of hammering, I felt that we had enough to enable me to move the rocks around to create the footing pads for the pier columns of the house and the lanai (patio, porch, or deck). I spent the next two days moving rocks and leveling out the footing bottoms. Now I need to get some material to build forms.
At the same time, I continued to clear portions of the Ahi lot. I was able to find and identify all four corner pins.
I cleared the downed trees and branches along the north/east side of the property and piled them in the driveway.
I cleared a pathway through the lot to the back fence line along the south/west property line.
There is a fence on this property line that the neighbor installed. When he did so, he cut the trees and branches and piled them on my property. I moved the ones for the first 50 feet or so out to the driveway pile.
I also identified and began clearing the west/north property side. This side is mainly the tall thick grass that grows in huge clumps. It is very thick and overgrown in this section of the property.
In the movie titled “Romancing The Stone”, Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas have just slid down the side of a mountain in a waterslide and are running away from the cops. He pulls out his machete and begins hacking at the tall grass in the jungle, following what he refers to as “some sort of trail”. That is just how I felt while clearing the west property line, except I had a pair of lopping shears instead of a machete!
In the south/east corner of the lot, I came across a half a dozen guava trees that had many guavas on them. My own guava patch! Yum!
Meanwhile, back at the lot, on Holowai, there are a few guava trees there as well. Twice, I have found a guava on the ground in the middle of the driveway. There is a guava tree in the jungle along side the driveway and there are a couple of guavas on it.
The purpose of all this is not to provide a construction project, but to experience the ocean. Therefore, I continue to go down to the shoreline. One day, there were so many people at the place we usually go, that I went out towards the point of land closer to Whittington Beach. Not many people venture out here as the road is quite rough – passable if you go slow, but still, it is rough! Once out here, I spotted a tidal pool in the middle of the lava field.
I checked it out, and there is a canyon, crevass that leads from the ocean to this pool. The waves come rolling and roaring through this narrow gorge and crash onto the side of the cliff that forms the pool.
As they crash here, they spill over and keep the pool full. It is about 40 feet long and 20 to 30 feet wide. At the deepest point it is maybe two feet deep. Just right for wading, soaking, relaxcing. As it is contained within the lava, it is at leasty 5 degrees warmer than the ocean. As this pool fills, it spills over into another depression next to it that is a little larger, but not much deeper.
One day, I ventured back along the coast and found yet another land locked tidal pool. While this one is about the same size as the other one, it is almost 6 feet deep in one spot. Being a bit deeper, it is cooler than the other pool – in fact, it is only a few degrees warmer than the ocean, but the water is calm.
A bit further along the coast, is an estuary/tidal area that is about as hundred feet across and is guarded at the ocean by a rocky shelf. While this area is subject to some of the wave action of the ocean, it is a bit less violent – especially during low tides and calm seas. But when the tide is up and the seas are full – watch out! I would not want to risk being in there then! The possibility of being washed across the sharp rocks and out into the ocean to then be slammed back against the cliffs is too great! There is so much more here than we had originally thought!
I have not yet seen a place/opportunity to launch or to land a kayak here, but maybe. . .
I like to come here and spend an hour or two . . . watching the ocean, soaking in the pools, eating lunch, etc., I set up a shade cover off the back of the car to sit under. This gives me a front row seat to the best show in town!
I could stay here all day!
While gathering up branches and clearing the Ahi lot, I came across an unexpected tenant.
A Jackson Cameleon. (poor photography skills)
But he’s not the only visitor I had. Back at the Holowai lot, I regularly had a pair of Red Crested Cardinals stop by looking for crumbs. I began to accomodate them, and soon their friends joined. At times, I had six of these red headded birds, two regular red Cardinals, as well as a couple of green finch type birds stopping by.
You have to look real close at the concrete floor to see the birds.
And the geckos were making themselves right at home.
My time in Hawaii was quickly winding down. I am quite pleased with the progress on this trip – Footings dug, Ahi Road cleared past our lot, a driveway started, some clearing done. Not exactly what was on my “to do” list, but we’ll get to that . . . Next Time!
TTFN
TropicalCastaway 