Hawaii - part two

I've been putting off updating about Hawaii because I have SOOOOO many pictures to choose from - sometimes I think longingly (!!) of the olden days when every picture you took was carefully monitored because film got expensive and then you had to pay to have it developed. Today we just snap snap snap - one afternoon at the beach I took 150 pictures of the clouds and sun and sunset!!! Now I get to pick out one or two of them to put on the blog...OUCH!

















here I am playing Shawn - but of course my little camera doesn't do nearly as well as his nice one and my little brain just put it on auto and shot the picture - but it is still a beautiful water lily















The whole road to Hana isn't this lush but a lot of it is!! Gorgeous drive even if it took 4 hours to drive 52 miles! We came home the back way so it only took about 2 hours -



We stopped at a Botanical Garden on the Road to Hana - it was gorgeous. It was a very hot and humid day because the trade winds were not blowing. But still it was worth our time to wander up and down all the paths - I liked this picture because it incorporated part of the water lily pond and yet you could still see the ocean.





























Another view from the botanical gardens with the road in the middle of the picture and the blue ocean beyond.











I didn't realize I picked out so many pictures from the botanical gardens - the pathway on the left took us up and down all sorts of trails with plants and trees from all over the world.












Just a soft pretty flower on a tree - I must be partial to soft petals - thus petal soft jewelry!













We were amazed at the pine trees growing right next to palm trees - but once we stopped at the gardens we realized that the pine needles on the tree were very short - this is a branch on the pine tree and if you look at it up close you can see the little pine needles on the long skinny branches. They were very soft to the touch













This picture is for Cheryl - everyday we walk at the Layton Park and feed the black swan. At the Westin Hotel in Lahaina there was a beautiful black swan - very friendly, always ready to eat out of your hand. There was a white swan with a black neck too! The flamingos you see at the far right are real - I was standing right in front of the check in desk when I took this picture - I had a roof over my head but the pond itself was open to the sky, with gorgeous plants all around - the koi in the pond loved to be fed too - they had certain times posted so the children could come and feed the birds and the fish. There were also gorgeous parrots and two cockatiels (sp?)- one was white and the other birds were all very colorful.












This is another view of the same pond - I just moved back farther under the roofed area and so the picture is more shaded. So the black swan is in the shade and the flamingos are still eating. You can actually see one of the parrots on its perch at the far right of this picture. They loved 'talking' to the people.



More beauty to come...