Now, where was I....

Summer has gone, fall is about over, and winter will soon be here. It happens this way every year. But it's hard to tell what season it is, when you are over in Hawaii.

Flowers continue to bloom in December, and fruit matures in January or March. And what people are wearing makes no difference, because shorts and flowered shirts are a year round custom. The locals may wear a sweater over their tank tops when it gets down to 74 degrees.

My son John and I have gotten caught up in certain TV shows. "The Amazing Race" is our favorite, "Survivor" is second, and "Lost" is somewhere after that. While watching "Lost" I get excited whenever I see a scene filmed on Kauai, familiar to me from our days there, and I can't seem to restrain myself from shouting out something like, "Oh look at that. That's where Dad and I sat and watched for dolphins. Right there, at the end of that pier!" Poor John. He'd like to watch it without the documentary.

But he has been kind to record the story, and stop the video long enough to take a picture of the scene. Here's where Bob and I sat under that roof to watch for dolphins one Sunday afternoon. Didn't see a one.


The pier is in Hanalei Bay, and used to be used for off-loading bags of rice and oranges to be shipped to Japan. Yes, rice to Japan. The railroad tracks are still there, leading up to the pier. Or at least they were, in 1995.

All the beautiful jungle scenes seem to be filmed in the Kalalau Valley, where we sometimes took guests to view the Na Pali Coast.

Even "The Amazing Race" had scenes of Kauai, when racing couples had to find a certain "Haul Cane Road," or get buckets of water while transversing Opaeaka Waterfall on steel lines. Takes all the romance out of a song like "Beautiful Kauai" sung by Larry Rivera, when you are worried more about a couple falling into the water below, instead of noticing the rainbows down in the falls. I couldn't quite contain myself, much less want to try. Those were places in some of my happiest memories, and I have to share them with SOMEBODY.