For eight years, Dan, an assistant horticulturist and two helpers worked with cane knives, sickles, picks, shovels, and a chain saw clearing paths through the jungle. All the work was done by hand to avoid disturbing the natural environment or destroying valuable plants and tree roots. The men kept a slow and easy pace, and the work continued seven days a week until the Garden opened to the public in 1984.

 

Entering the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden

 

We found a place to park, and then headed into the Visitor Center to buy our tickets. Then we walked across the scenic highway to the Garden entrance, passing the bell that Pauline Lutkenhouse used to call her husband and the workers in from the Garden. The bell was actually one of many things salvaged from the old sugar mill that was on the property when Dan Lutkenhouse purchased it. Working in the sugar mill is what brought many emigrants to this part of Hawaii. When he was building the garden, Dan used metal framing from the sugar mill for many of the bridges, some of the boardwalk and many of the benches that are sprinkled through the Gardens.

Dan and Pauline Lutkenhouse have transformed Onomea Valley from a dense jungle to a pristine tropical paradise. Plant specimens have been gathered from tropical jungles around the world and planted by hand. The entire valley is treated as a nature preserve. There are giant rainforest trees here that form the dense overstory canopy of Onomea Valley. These include 100-foot tall mango trees that were probably planted in the late 1800s, breadfruit trees that date from the early 1900s and towering coconut palms that are constantly pruned to protect visitors from falling fruit.

In the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, exotic plants gathered from distant tropical rainforests grow side by side with native Hawaiian plants. Together they form a spectacular living work of art in the only tropical botanical garden in the United States that is situated on an ocean coast.

 

Descending the Boardwalk Into the Garden

 

A 500 foot long elevated boardwalk winds down the steep-walled, narrow ravine of Kahalii Stream that now runs dry because a 1949 landslide diverted all its water into Onomea Stream, and the Kahalii ravine boardwalk is lined with exotic tropical plants, including giant bamboo, bananas, flowering vines, orchids and ferns. Here is Fred coming down the boardwalk.

As we were coming down the boardwalk, and indeed all the time we were wandering through the Garden, both Fred and I were taking lots of pictures of plants and flowers. Of course, Fred, given his interests, took a great many more than I did. The Garden is organized into specific areas (some of which I'll describe), but we didn't deal with one area at a time but just wandered along the pathways.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

Actually, the number of beautiful pictures was a bit overwhelming. I thought aboud identifying them for you, but the time it would have taken to research that would have been prohibitive- certainly for me and probably for Fred, too, as many of the plants we saw were unique to specialized environments like Hawaii. But the plants and flowers were simply amazing, and I want you to be able to experience them.

Once again, using a slideshow is appropriate, as clicking on thumbnails and closing windows is itself time-consuming. But unlike other slideshows in this album, the sheer number of pictures mitigates against even a single show, and so I have broken the pictures up into smaller, but still substantial groups (about twenty pictures per group), and created a slideshow for each group. The first of these groups is here.

To view this first slideshow just click on the image at right and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

 

Palm Vista

 

Visitors come from all over the world to view the Garden's extraordinary collection of palms. The Garden is home to nearly 200 species of palms: fan, fish-tail, sago, date, and betel nut palms are just a few that can be seen from the Palm Vista. Other interesting palms include the wanga palm from Malaysia, the fastest-growing palm in the world; and the orange areca palm, with its fascinating red seeds. Along the Palm Vista Trail, from the Fern Circle to the bottom of the steps near the Palm Jungle, we saw more than 50 species of plants and trees - including the giant jackfruit tree whose fruit can be two feet long!

At the end of the trail is the Palm Jungle; its towering Alexandra palms created the feeling of a church. Originally from Australia, Alexandra palms grow profusely in valleys along the Hamakua Coast. They have long, creamy flower clusters that appear below the fronds. These flowers produce huge clusters of seeds which turn from green to red. Then they fall and carpet the jungle floor to produce hundreds of tiny new palm tree seedlings.

After going through the Palm Jungle, we found Onomea Stream descending from the mountains through this glade of palms on its way to the sea. Onomea Stream has created what is referred to as the crown jewel of the Garden, Onomea Falls, which we will get to next. But we looked at the many palms for quite a while, including this one and its enormous leaves.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

Now for a second installment on the huge number of very pretty pictures we took here in the botanical garden. Again, I have taken a group of pictures and put them in a slideshow. That slideshow is at right.

To view this second slideshow, again just click on the image at right and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

 

Onomea Falls

 

This spectacular three‑tiered waterfall is often claimed to be the most beautiful in Hawaii.

It was discovered far back in the jungle by Dan Lutkenhouse, about three years after work on the lower Garden began. (This gives you another indication how large the Garden is and how overgrown it must have been when the property was purchased. You'd think that a feature like this would be easily found.) He found it one day when he decided to hack his way through the jungle alongside the stream.

Onomea Falls is set amidst the natural forest of palms and ferns. It seemed even cooler here with the variety of mosses growing on the surrounding rocks and trees. We could see some small fish and prawns in the clear, cool water. These pictures were taken from a viewing bridge that has been built over Onomea Stream just below the falls. This was also an excellent place from which to take some movies.

Fred's movie of Onomea Falls, which you can watch with the player below, will give you an excellent appreciation for the falls, although it seems that his attention was distracted partway through filming by something high up in one of the palm trees.

My own movie of the falls is a little different; I just wanted to give you an appreciation for what it was like to stand here and listen to the falls and experience the peace and serenity, so the narration is minimal. Have a look at this movie using the player at left.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

Now for a third installment on the many, many of the pictures we took of the incredible variety of plants and flowers that we found here in the Hawaii Botanical Garden. Again, I have taken a group of pictures and put them in a slideshow. That slideshow is at right.

To view this second slideshow, again just click on the image at right and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

 

Onomea Bay

 

From the Gardens, one of the trails leads to the majestic Pacific coast at a spot called Bay Vista, where your first view is of Twin Rocks and Onomea Arch. And just south of Onomea Arch is Onomea Bay a relatively tranquil bay for this side of the island and which is bisected by the remains of a large lava tube that juts out into the water. Watch my movie of the waves in Onomea Bay with the player below and compare it with the movies below of Crab Cove and you will see the difference.

Looking out eastward into the Pacific from here is inspiring, and the two views whose thumbnails are below are representative of what we saw:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

The trail continues to Turtle Point, the easternmost tip of the shoreline inside the Gardens, and from here you can get a good view of Rock Island, an outcropping of lava that is certainly accurately named. The views themselves are pretty amazing, but what really give you a feeling of having been there are looking at some of the movies we took. All three of these movies are of the wave action along the shorline of the Gardens from Bay Vista around to Turtle Point. We think they are all good, and you can view them using the movie players below:

 

There was one other interesting formation here at the shoreline of the Gardens- a small sea cave. You'll note when you use the movie player at left to watch the movie of the sea cave that there must be another entrance as the waves seem to force water through the cave in both directions.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

As we are preparing to come back into the gardens proper, let me insert here yet another group of plant and flower pictures that we've been taking on the last part of our walk. Again, I have taken a conveniently-sized group of pictures and put them into a slideshow for easy viewing.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at right and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

 

Crab Cove and Turtle Bay

 

When you take the trail past Rock Island, you round a point and then have a view towards the southeast of Crab Cove (the nearer inlet in the picture at right) and Turtle Bay (the farther inlet).

The boundary of the Gardens does not include either inlet, and the south fence of the Gardens kept me from climbing down along the shoreline to get onto the rocks in Crab Cove.

But from this vantage point I could take a good movie of the waves breaking in Crab Cove, and you can see that they were significantly rougher than those in Onomea Bay. That is probably because the shore depth decreases less rapidly here and so the waves have a longer way in which they can pile up and then break. Have a look at this movie using the player at left.

Fred's Pictures My Pictures (Click on Thumbnails to View)

Also from this vantage point you can get good views to the southeast. While these are quite similar, it was hard to decide which were best, so I've included thumbnails for six of the best views that Fred and I got, and you can look at the ones you want. These thumbnails are at left.

We were at the farthest point of the Gardens from the entrance, and so now we would be working our way back.

 

Back Into the Gardens

 

From the shoreline, the trail leads back up along the northern shore of Crab Cove. In this area there were more palms and a rainforest canopy. As we walked along the trail, we passed a replica of an ancient Hawaiian totem. I looked in the guide materials for mention of it or its significance, but I could not find anything about it.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

Eventually, the trail came out onto a dirt road that crossed the boundary of the Gardens; going south, the road crossed Alakahi Stream and then sloped up along the shore to meet up with the scenic highway at the spot where we got our first views of Onomea Bay. At the time, we didn't know that the road we pulled off into to take our pictures went down into the Gardens. Going north, into the Gardens, the road went for just a short way and then stopped. I imagine that the road was built at the time the Gardens were built, and that it is used now to bring in material that would be very difficult to bring down the boardwalk and pathways.

The Gardens had apparently stationed an employee at this point for two reasons. First, he directed people who came up the trail and onto the road that to continue into the Gardens the had to turn right, walk past him and then onto other of the garden paths. Secondly, I can only assume that he is there to keep unauthorized people from entering the Gardens simply by walking or driving down that dirt road. I found it hard to imagine why a person would have to sit there when they could easily put a locked gate across the road, so I concluded that the employee is only there when the road is in use and it is inconvenient to lock and unlock the gate.

When I got to the road, I turned to go up it a short ways so I could get down to the shoreline, but the fellow kept me from doing that (perhaps the land next door is owned by someone who has only given license to the Gardens to traverse it), and called to me to come back into the Gardens.

Here is another slideshow full of beautiful pictures of the flora here in the Botanical Gardens. To view the slideshow, just click on the image at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

 

Alakahi Stream and Boulder Creek Falls

 

From Crab Cove, we have followed the Alakahi Stream, and it has led us up along the shore to the dirt road and the way back into the main part of the Gardens. A little ways past the guard post, the trail turned again to follow Alakahi Stream up towards Lily Lake.

Here, another trail branches off and heads towards the Cook Pine grove, but what we wanted to see was Boulder Creek Falls. We had crossed Boulder Creek after our last stop before the Gardens on the Scenic Drive, but could not see where the sound of falling water was coming from. The trail continued along Boulder Creek for a ways so that you could get closer to the upper falls, a cataract about eight feet high. That's not very high as waterfalls go, but just the right size to set off this part of the Gardens.

 

The Parrot Aviary

 

The last stop we made in the Gardens was near Lily Lake at the Parrot Aviary. Here, there were a number of cages with quite a few parrots in them. They were noisy and moving around a lot, so it was hard to get pictures of them, but you can look at the best three pictures here, here and here.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

And now for the last group of pictures that we took of the amazing flora here in the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. It's been pretty amazing, looking at all the plants that don't grow at home, and marveling at the incredible variety here. I know that some of the pictures have been of the same plant or type of plant, but it seemed that around every turn there was some different plant or more beautiful example of one we'd seen earlier. In any case, moving through the slideshow is pretty easy and quick, so I hope you'll have a look at them.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

We enjoyed our visit to the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, and would like to have stayed longer (well, at least Fred would have), but we had some other sights to see today, so we were off again.

 

Akaka Falls

 

We got back in the car and headed further up the scenic highway towards Pepeekeo where we could get back to the main highway and head up to Akaka Falls. Just north of the Gardens, though, we found yet another small waterfall running underneath the highway. We stopped at the bridge to take a look (the red star on the map near PePeekeo Mill). The waterfall was on the high side of the road, of course, and the water ran under the bridge and down the stream towards the ocean. We were still pretty high up, so I would imagine that there must be another waterfall further on down.

We passed through the town of Pepeekeo Mill and followed the Old Mamalahoa Highway until we got back to Route 19- the main coast road. From there, it was a short distance up to the turnoff for Honomu, then through that town and out the road to Akaka Falls.

We parked and began to follow the paved trail to get out to the falls themselves. Just a short distance down the trail, we encountered one of the many small streams that ran alongside the trail, and just a few hundred feet further on we encountered a very small waterfall on another of the many streams we saw.

Having so many little streams and waterfalls nearby made walking along the trail quite pleasant. In many places, there was a railing along the trail to keep visitors from wandering off into the rainforest; here is Jay on the railing at a turn in the trail. The forest got quite thick in places, and at times we had to use a flash to take pictures, such as this one of Ron and Jay on the Akaka Falls trail. Along the trail we came on a thicket of banyan trees; they are the ones with the vertical root systems. At this particular tree, the aerial roots had dropped to the ground and rooted forming an enclosure of roots that was big enough that I could get inside it.

We continued along the trail walkway and pretty soon we were quite close to the falls. From there, we ascended to an observation point from which we could see Akaka Falls on the other side of the valley. This was still not a very good view, though, so we continued along the trail to the observation point from which we had an excellent view of Akaka Falls. Here is Ron at Akaka Falls, for example.

Fred's Pictures Ron's Pictures

We took a number of really good pictures here and again it was hard to pick which ones I should include in this album, so I'm going to do what I did earlier today and give you the best three of the pictures Fred took and the best three that I took. Please click on the thumbnails of the ones you'd like to see.

The last thing I did here at the overlook was to film a panoramic view of Akaka Falls and I think it turned out quite well. Watch the movie using the player below.

Leaving the overlook, we continued on the circular path back to the parking area.

Along the way, Fred found even more flora worthy of a picture, and one of the best of those pictures is at left.

At one point, we passed a small waterfall hidden in the foliage near the side of the trail.

For the most part, it was an easy walk up the trail and there were lots of interesting things to see.

Just before the end of the trail, there was one more small waterfall beside the trail. The picture doesn't really capture it well; for that, you should use the player at right to watch my movie of it.

As we drove back towards the main highway, we stopped in the small town of Honomu. The stores on Main Street looked really interesting. We stopped and had a drink and one of them, and Fred wandered into an intriguing antique store where he found some unusual antique bottles to add to his collection. Then we headed on back to the main highway and went north again to our next point of interest- Laupahoehoe Point.

 

Laupahoehoe Point

 

Our northernmost stop this afternoon was Laupahoehoe Point Park, about thirty miles or so north of Hilo. We missed the turnoff once, and had to get some directions, but found the park after driving down a winding residential road to the shore.

Laupahoehoe Point Park is a beach and recreation area, and there is a place to picnic or camp, a small beach, a boat launch ramp and a pier made of honeycombed concrete that protects the boat launch area and small beach from the worst of the pounding surf. Not only had the honeycomb of concrete been built here, but there were also huge concrete pieces that looked exactly like gigantic jacks that were placed along the shore to protect the park area from huge waves; they would serve to break them up before they could do too much damage.

As you can easily tell from the picture at left, the views from here were spectacular, and the weather had really cooperated (today was as different from yesterday as could be possible- beautiful blue sky, moderate temperatures and a cooling breeze).

 

I found a very good aerial image of Laupahoehoe Point, so I'd like to present you with both a map and an aerial view:

On the map, I've marked the route we took to get here and I've indicated the direction to Hilo. I've also superimposed a small box that shows you the area of the map that is covered by the aerial view beside it. On the aerial view, I've indicated where the car was parked (you will see it in some of the pictures and movies, so it will help you orient yourself), I've indicated the direction to Hilo and I've also drawn a line to indicate where one or more of us walked along the shoreline. All the pictures and movies were taken along that line. In the aerial view, you can clearly see the boat ramp and the honeycombed concrete structure that protects it; you will see both of those in various pictures and movies.

This area has some history to it, and the large stone marker at the entrance to the walkway along the ocean tells the story.

 

The recreational aspects of the park are, I am sure, valuable to the residents, but for us, the main attraction was the scenery, and THE major aspect of the that scenery that made it so spectacular was the shoreline itself. The contrast of the black, sharp lava rocks and the deep blues of the ocean was nothing short of amazing. Pictures don't tell the whole story, though. Only the movies can really capture the real flavor for what this place was like.

Below, I've put the usual thumbnails for most of the pictures we took here. I know we took a lot of them, and I don't expect you to look at all of them, but I hope you look at enough of them to get the feeling of this place, and perhaps also get the feeling that you'd been here. I've grouped the pictures into those of just the shore and the waves, those that contain one or more of us and the movies. At the very least, I hope you'll look at the four movies; they, more than anything else, will describe Laupahoehoe Point.

The Movies of Laupahoehoe Point

 

We took a number of excellent movies here at Laupahoehoe Point, and you can use the players below to watch them:

The Shore and the Waves at Laupahoehoe Point

 

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

Here at Laupahoehoe Point we found one of the most ruggedly beautiful shorelines in the world. The contrast of the white breakers against the dark black volcanic rock underneath an azure sky made this spot one of the most beautiful that we visited during our Hawaii sojourn. It was actually hard to whittle down the pictures to include here- and I ended up with almost 30 of them. With this many, of course, a slideshow was the mechanism of choice for you to look at them.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at right and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

Now it was on to the last stop of the day, this one back down in Hilo- Rainbow Falls.

 

Rainbow Falls

 

We got back up to the highway and then headed back down towards Hilo. Just before the main part of town, we headed west on Saddle Road, bore west on Waianuenue Avenue and then took the marked turn off on Rainbow Drive for Rainbow Falls.

 

Rainbow Falls was really lovely, and to begin with, you should probably watch my first movie of it by using the player below:

Rainbow Falls is named because almost all day long, actually until about the time we arrived, the sun is shining through the fine spray that is sent up by the three waterfalls that comprise Rainbow Falls. There was a walkway along the side of the canyon opposite the falls, and by walking along here we could get an excellent view of Rainbow Falls. This spot was also an excellent one for a movie of the falls that I took just to give you an appreciation of what it is like just to stand here and listen to the restful sound of the falls (when not punctuated by the comments of other onlookers). Please have a look at this movie using the player at right.

Although the paved walkway did not continue around to the other side of the canyon, there was a trail that took me out to a point where I could view the top of Rainbow Falls. From this vantage point, I could see the stream coming down from the middle of the island, and I could follow it over the falls, exactly what the movie of the stream going over Rainbow Falls shows you. Watch it using the player at left. You might notice in the movie and in the picture that there are a couple of guys sitting out on the rock at the very top of the falls; you can see them better in this closeup of the top of Rainbow Falls.

There were two more waterfalls that were marked on a plaque at Rainbow Falls, and since we had a bit of time, we decided to go look at them. To get to the farthest one, we simply follwed the map at Rainbow Falls and continued out the highway until it crossed a bridge over the stream. We parked on the other side and walked back out onto the bridge where we could see a dam and another set of falls further upstream. The entire valley was very picturesque, but that natural waterfall above the bridge and dam was especially beautiful. To give you a better idea of what we saw here, please watch the movie of the upper falls and dam here on the stream above Rainbow Falls, by using the player at right.

The last stop was on the way back from the upper falls, and it was Boiling Pots State Park. We drove into the parking area and walked across the grass to the overlook. Here, we could see yet another set of falls and a really beautiful valley. It looked like a painting you might have seen in the Romantic Period or by one of those artists that paints mountains and waterfalls and plays with the light. The water in the stream (the same stream that flows over Rainbow Falls, passed below the overlook in a series of eddies and pools, and perhaps it was these eddies and pools that resulted in the name "Boiling Pots" State Park.

Again, perhaps this movie of Boiling Pots State Park will give you an added dimension and help you appreciate what we were seeing. Watch it using the player below:

 

Well, this was the end of our visit to the Big Island. It has been a wonderful three days here, but now we have to head to the airport, turn in our car (Ron and Jay turned in their separate car yesterday afternoon) and board the Hawaiian Airlines flight back to Honolulu.

 

The Waikiki Gateway Hotel

 

We picked up another rental car in Honolulu for our last day tomorrow, and then we went to the same restaurant west of Pearl Harbor that we'd been to the day we visited the Arizona Memorial and we had dinner. It was quite good, as it had been before, and we were checking into the Waikiki Gateway Hotel about 9 o'clock.

I made reservations at this hotel because it was a bit further away from Waikiki Beach and consequently a fair amount cheaper. We weren't planning to go to the beach tomorrow, but rather to drive over the east side of the island for that, and for some hiking. Ron and Jay had to leave in the early afternoon anyway. We made the rounds of a few bars, and walked down to Kuhio Street for a while, and that was it.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

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	November 11, 2005: Hawaii Trip Day 7
	November 9, 2005: Hawaii Trip Day 5
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