I am a Japanese female who came to the U.S. for the research opportunity as a scientist.
In my free time, I go hiking, backpacking, XC skiing. I love to be in the deep wilderness. I write my adventures from all over the world and Introduce the beauty of nature, from a viewpoint of Japanese.
日本出身の女性研究者かつハイカー。
休日はハイキング、バックパッキング、クロスカントリスキーなどで多忙。
日本人の視点から見た世界中の自然の美しさを、読者が旅をしているような感覚で読んで頂ければと思い、このブログを作成。
2018 Memorial weekend in May, I went camping in Acadia National Park in Maine.
There are many beautiful lakes and pretty ocean views there.
Jordon Pond
I didn't know that Maine is a pretty state. First of all, I didn't know the state of Maine for the first five years of stay in the U.S. Maine is northeastern state in the U.S. Actually northern part is most north, and most eastern in the U.S. The first time I recognized the state of Maine was when I saw Acadia National Park in Maine in the book of American National Park. Pictures look pretty, so Acadia National Park had been on my bucket list for a while. Finally I am in the driving distance there, so I visited!
Acadia National Park is mainly on Mount Desert Island and with a lot of small islands nearby. Therefore it has many rocky coastline. Due to this kind of location, this park has pretty and peaceful scenery with water: lake and ocean. However, not only water scenery, but also the park has mountains. So you can hike up to mountains and look over the lakes and ocean. Indeed I climbed up Cadillac mountain. This place is "the first sunrise" in the U.S. I did hike up Cadillac mountain, but people actually can drive up there. From the top, you can see Atlantic ocean and numerous small island on the ocean. It is peaceful.
Moving from California, so much water filling views are new to me. California has more dry (yet still beautiful) view and even desert. In New England, so much water in the nature, which is beautiful.
At the top Cadillac Mountain
Not only Cadillac mountain, there are many short trails. One of them, some portions are steep and need to climb a ladder (at least ladder is there, so not too difficult). Some portions, you need to walk on the metal thing (on the right picture). It is fun these little adventures.
I camped 2 nights at Blackwoods campgrounds. Despite the huge campground (+300 sites), it is quiet and nice. Compared to California, camping fee is higher in New England in general, however, it is worth visiting Acadia.
We swam with dolphins 5 times. This is amazing and unforgettable experience.
Hawaiian spinner dolphins are nocturnal. They travel deep in the see at night to feed. In the daytime, Hawaiian spinner come to bay to rest. Spinner dolphins live all over the world in the warm area, but ones only in Hawai’i and northern Brazil come to shallow water area to rest. When they are resting, half or the brain is sleeping and the other is awake.
A pod of dolphins
We camped on the beach in the local park, and every morning around 8:30 a.m., a pod of dolphins came to the bay. The sign says that it is not allowed to share the location on social media: so it is a secret place. As soon as they come, we jumped in the ocean and saw dolphins. Usually a school of dolphins consists of 10-20. In the group, 3-5 dolphins really synchronize to swim and come to the surface to breath. They repeat going under then going up to surface to breath. Sometimes they jump in the air. They twist their bodies. Usually dolphins stay in for the entire morning in the same bay and circling around. I was able to observe them for several hours each day just by floating on the surface. Also, it is the right thing to do: not to disturb their biological behaviors by chasing with diving.
Sunshine on the dolphins
They are not scared of human if you just float, and by doing that, they come really close to you to breath on the surface. Looking at three dolphins just in front of me in a beautifully synchronizing movement is extremely exciting. They are so close and looks like enjoying swimming near me. Dolphins are social animals and I could tell that they communicate each other. One of the days, the dolphins are very playful and I saw they were swimming together by chasing each other and jumping a lot. That was a sunny day after a couples of day of cloudy days, so they might be happy. On that day dolphins are shiny on reflect of sun. It was beautiful. I am so grateful that I was able to have such joyful, exciting, and precious dolphin experience. Dolphins are definitely the highlight of this Big Island trip.
The last five days of the trip, we camped at local park. The picture above is from camping site. The guide book says that there are no campers on weekdays and local people on weekends. Due to holiday season, there were many local people were camping. Actually there were ONLY local people there. Only a little far from Kona, there were few travelers.
Star fuits
One camper next to us lives there and he gave us fruits and vegetables from his yard. One of them was star fruits which I had never had. It was juicy and delicious.
Eggplants from farmer's makert in miso soup
We also brought fruits and vegetables from Hilo farmers markets. We got tomatos, avocados, mangoes, bananas, eggplants, papayas. They were REALLY tasty. We put vegetables in camping food, such as miso soup or Japanese curry.
Hilo Farmers market is really popular for both local and tourists. Really fresh and good vegetables, fruits are available. Not only that, some bento, and cooked goods are available. I bought home-made taro chips. They are delicious. Not like commercial chips, no salt added, so I was able to taste the original taro.
Another important thing in Hawai'i is cats.
As you may know, there are many, actually tremendous amounts of feral cats on all of Hawaiian islands.
Except for backpacking campsites, every campgrounds where car can access had feral cats. Most of the feral cats on Big Island are very cautious and they don’t get close to human beings. They are really adopted in the wild.
tabby at the campground
Only one cat was friendly. She was with us for the last five days of camping. The campsite was usually occupied with only local people. There were three cats at the campground, but only one, black and white, was friendly and two others, tabby and black, were really shy and never got very close to humans. I was able to take pictures of tabby, but the black one was always far away from human.
The friendly black and white was always at our tent vestibule. She was there all night. Also in the daytime the vestibule seemed good place for her to hide. One reason was as a shade, but more important reason was to hide from children. Some kids chased the cat and she seemed to want to hide from them.
She even played with me using some plants. It was like a tamed cat.
Cats are not native in Hawai’i. They were introduced from Europeans. Cats were important to catch rats on ships.
Now feral cats are considered to impact Hawaiian native animals, such as birds. This problem has been controversial how to deal with that. Indeed it is a tough thing to deal with for cat + animal lovers.
I saw the real rain forest at Kalōpā Native Forest State Park.
wild guava
East side of Big Island has a lot of rain. It makes great rain forest. Kalōpā Native Forest State Park is a great place to see it. There is ōhiʻa lehua forest. I had never seen ōhiʻa before. ōhiʻa are native Hawaiian trees found in the wet area. This is extremely peaceful forest. No sounds on the most portion, but you hear some area has nice sounds from bell crickets. There are many ferns below trees. I found some guava and ate it. It was juicy and tasty.
Because the east side has a lot of rains and beaches on the east coast are not very suitable for snorkeling, people usually focus on the west side. Also if you don’t camp, it can be very expensive to stay for a long time. We saved money by camping during the whole trip and explored east side when it was sunny.
Near Hilo, we camped on the yard of hostel. It is common in Europe to camp in the yard of huts or hostels. I am glad that such kind of camping in Hawai’i. By camping there, we had an access to outdoor hot shower, couches near the yard, and even outlets to charge camping gears, such as head lamps or solar chargers. These 2 nights in Hilo was the only opportunity to take a hot shower during the3-week trip. Usually my trips are no shower at all, so it was a glamping there.
Day9-11, we snorkeled everyday at Kahalu’u, Kiholo, and Puako.
During this trip, we snorkeled 11 times. It was amazing to see the sea world. There are hundreds and thousands of species of fish in the sea. Some are colorful like yellow, orange, blue, green. A lot of fish have patterns, such as poka dots or stripes. Some fish look like they are smiling. Some swim as large school. Sometimes only one unique fish is there.
On the other hand, there are many fish who are really similar color to rocks. The camouflage is working well.
Some are playing together, some are peacefully swimming, some are eating with big focus.
The fish world never bores me.
A couple of years ago I first tried snorkeling on Kauai island. That time I didn’t float well, so always salty water came into my snorkel. This time I used a swim vest, so it was much easier. Somehow I don’t float well in the ocean, although I don’t have a problem in pool.
Petroglyph Trail
We also hiked on the petroglyph trail. Ancient Hawaiian traveled to the specific point to produce the petroglyph. They didn’t have even shoes and went there by walking on the lava, which is hot in the day time with sun. Most of the petroglyph are humans and towards the mountains. Who? Why? No answers exist to any questions, but it is fascinating.
Another exciting thing on Big Island is Kona coffee. It was super tasty. I had more than 10 cups of Kona coffee during this trip. I wish it was more available in the mainland US.
From day6-8, we did 2 nights-3 day backpacking in Volcanoes National Park. At first we planned to go backpacking in Waipio and Waimanu valleys where in the rainy side of island. However, it was raining very hard and the ranger at the trailhead said that the river was impassible. So we went to national park and asked the ranger if there were available backpacking permits. Luckily there were. In fact the ranger said that nobody was camping at Halape, which was our destination. The day we would be hiking out was the day when the government might shut down. At that point we (and even the ranger) didn’t think that the shutdown would happen. However, it did happen (and still going on when I am writing this in Jan 16th 2019!), so it was great we changed the plan: Halape is one of highlights of the trip.
From the trailhead to the campsite, mostly the trail is on lava along the ocean. I had never seen such combination. Both lava and ocean is the source of nature. I felt happy that I was able to hike in such a dramatic view.
On the way to Halape, we saw two rangers checking the trail.
Mr.N asked, “Do you want to see permits?”
The ranger answered, “No. Enjoy the hike!”
Wow. Hawaii’s rangers are so friendly and relaxed. If it was in California, probably rangers check permits. I was checked JMT permits twice during the backpacking.
The beach at Halape is really beautiful. Because nobody was on the beach, it was very quiet and peaceful. We camped on the beach under coconut trees. We saw beautiful sunset in the evening, full moon at night, bright sunshine in the day. Every moment was pretty.
Lava and Ocean
Near the beach there was a pool. It was connected to the ocean, but no waves and calm. It was shallow. The ranger told it was okay to go swimming there if you go to ocean first and clean up your body. The reason is there are many unique creature there and sunscreen should not be exposed in the pool. I went to ocean and then swam in the pool. The fish there was amazing. I saw many interesting sea creature I didn’t see any other snorkeling points on Big Island. Mr.N didn’t bring snorkeling set or goggle, and he didn’t like to open eyes in the water. I brought goggle, so I swam many times in the pool. I was so excited. It was a wonderful swim there.
This day we explored the center of Volcanoes National Park. First at the visitor center, we saw a short movie about 2018 eruption. This 2018 lower Puna eruption completely changed the landscape of Puna area, including the national park. Now no red lava is coming out, because all of it went outside during the Puna eruption. Also the size of Kilauea Iki Crater, which is the most famous crater located near the visitor center, is much bigger now. Crater is much larger than I had imagine and I felt the massive power of underground earth. It is one of the vigorous events to change the landscape of nature and make the nature beautiful. We also saw many steam vents. The eruption is calmed down, but still many activities are going on. It was nice to see earth’s energy.
A few days later the park was closed again for the government shutdown. So it was really lucky I could visit there.
Honokane Nui
This day we camped at Kiholo Bay state park. Camping there was allowed only Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Probably because not many campers on weekends and that is the strategy to kick hippies out. The campsite is just on the beach. So it is nice to see sunset at the campsite. Sunset happens everywhere everyday, but sun setting over the ocean is especially pretty and never be boring.
The next day we hiked to Polulu Valley to Honokane Nui. Polulu Valley is very pretty with rapturous blue ocean. Because there many hikers here, we went to the next hill, Honokane Nui. This is very quiet and nice view point to sit down and chill. It is funny that nobody hikes more than 3 miles in Hawai’i. So you can get to the really peaceful area by hiking only a few miles. We had quality time by staring at lush green hills and beautiful ocean.
