As we left the Dole Plantation this afternoon, we saw this column of smoke rising from behind the hill…. It looked ominous even from this distance (3-4 miles)….

As we got closer, it looked worse….

And worse….

Then even worse!

And, even in this last picture, we are not even in visual range of the fire, just the smoke!

After this picture, Marianne switched over to the camcorder so the flames and such are all on DVD…. It was a pretty big fire, and as of 7pm tonight when we went down to Haleiwa, which is about 2 miles from the fire flashpoint, it was still burning, but the smoke was much less intense, more of a haze to the sky. We stopped at Pizza Hut for dinner, and their phones were out because of a power outage caused buy the fire. The phone central office was out of power or damaged, I guess. We found out that our cell phones (both) were not working as well, so it must have taken out the power to the cell tower(s) as well…..

The fire is about 10 miles west of us, and burning in a westerly direction thanks to a nice strong easterly breeze all day….

Stopped to visit the Dole Pineapple Plantation Visitor’s Center today. It was just another big tourist trap center, but it was fun just the same. We opted out of going to the world’s largest maze on their property because my legs were a little tired today. But, we did take the 20 minute train ride around the plantation, and I video taped the entire ride to DVD.

Pineapple plants in the Plantation

A single Pineapple plant in the display area.

They also have many other tropical plants, including Bananas!

We stopped at the Haleiwa Beach Park on the west end of the North Shore surfing area. Of course, this time of year, the waves are small. November through January are the really big waves when the north winds kick in…. Yesterday, the north shore was almost calm, but today there is a 2-3 foot surf building.

Just a spectacular view of the volcanic ridge to the west of the beach

This is the more protected part of the beach, for the swimmers….

We stopped at the Waimea Canyon and Falls Park, but realized we didn’t have our dirty hiking shoes with us, so we just wandered around the grounds outside of the paid admission area for a short while….

This view is looking up the ridge from the parking lot

This is one of the big old Banyan (?) trees

Marianne was facinated by this red flowering tree, but we forgot to see if there was a tag to identify it… Have to check it out when we go back to hike up the canyon to the falls.

Ok, so those weird plants are bigger than I am….

Well, we tried to get this morning off to a great start, but one thing lead to another, and after I took the sunrise picture from our balcony this morning, I ended up back in bed for another hour….

So much for the free breakfast from our travel package, but it was an hour drive down to Honolulu for a 7:30am breakfast, and we didn’t get to bed last night until 11:15pm Hawaii time. That made for another 21 hour day for us, as we got up at 5am San Francisco time…..