The hike is a non-stop visual barrage of geological awesomeness – trekking across great slabs of granite pushed clean by a passing glacier some tens of thousands of years ago. Ancient cypress and bristlecone pines windswept into impossible shapes, tarns left behind by glaciers melting in place, trees cut short by beavers, just like in cartoons. The round trip was about the same length and technical difficulty as the Kalalau trail we did in Kauai, but the mile-high-plus elevation did a number on us – you get tired a whole lot faster with the reduced oxygen.

For larger versions, see the Flickr set.

Tracked down a couple of geocaches on the trip. As we approached the first, hail started to trickle down on us, and on my bare legs. Had to keep moving to stay warm. The second geocache was hanging in a tree on top of a great granite slap pushed up by forces you shudder to imagine. It was a level 4 terrain cache, and we spent a good bit of time talking about how serious it would be to get injured miles from anywhere, and what it would mean to get helicoptered out. We agreed not to do anything stupid, to move slowly, not make any hasty decisions. Miles got it. Still, halfway up to Dawg Years we decided to back out and not go any further… until we spotted the secret back way up to the lonely windswept pine that we were certain held the cache. From there on it was easy going, and I let Miles do the honors.

It only got colder on the way back, as we listened to thunder rippling across the valleys, signaling the start of rain. Incredibly lucky – we only got sprinkled on, but it started to pour buckets just after we got in the car.

Decided to see what the camera in the iPhone G4 was capable of, and took all of these images with it. Impressed overall, but they’re still not at the quality of images from the PowerShot. From now on, will continue to hike with the PowerShot, but will be stoked to have the iPhone on-hand for spontaneous quickies.

Route to Lake Margaret (click Replay to view):

Elevation profile:

Unfortunately, the weekend ended badly, when Mom slipped on gravel heading down to Cat Creek, where we were planning to do some swimming in the melt water. I was 10′ in front of her when I heard the “oomph,” and turned around to see her ankle bent at a very wrong angle. Dad and I hoisted her back to the car, and she ended up in the E.R. She’ll have to have a plate installed, and will be laid up for quite a while. Best luck and love to both of them getting through this – a horrible thing to witness and it won’t be pleasant for the next month. Much love.

At the same time, some of your old-school stereotypes about Hawaii just aren’t going to come true. Visitors are no longer greeted on the tarmac with a flower lei around the neck, you aren’t going to hear ukulele concerts or witness spontaneous hula dances on every corner, and luaus are no longer organic affairs where people sit around on the beach sipping Mai Tais and picking meat off a pit-grilled pig, scooping three-finger poi with bare hands.

To be fair, your visions of stereotypical Hawaiian nature are still real, while the stereotypes you may hold of Hawaiian culture are probably not.

View Kauai in a larger map
The two blue marker points show where we stayed on our two-week Kauai adventure.

Kauai is encircled – for the most part – by a single road running through a dozen or so major towns. You can drive around the entire island in a couple of hours (note that “driving through” does not equal “exploring,” and that driving the outer rim will only get you to the beach towns, not to the juicy jungles that comprise Kauai’s interior). I say “for the most part” because the insane terrain of the Napali coast has proven impenetrable to road builders – it’s simply not possible to build a drivable road through the mountains of the northwest coast.

You won’t find the “real” Kauai by hanging around in the downtown areas. But if you make an effort to get even a little off the beaten path, you will find yourself surrounded by nature at its most powerful. Kauai is a volcanic wonderland of dense jungle, incredible ocean life, succulent wild fruit, and loose chickens.

Throw yourself into the environment, and you won’t be able to avoid swimming in impossibly blue/green waters, inhaling the cleanest air your nostrils have ever encountered (remember you’re surrounded on all sides by thousands of miles of wild Pacific). You will find that the Aloha spirit is omnipresent and real. You will find yourself slowing down, being reminded why you’re walking this earth, and what nature at its most raw can do for your soul.

In June/July 2010, we spent two weeks in Kauai, staying in two different houses with two different families, in two very different environments. In the end, I shot more than a thousand photos. Thought I’d turn all my vacation notes and photos into a quick blog entry on return; the process ended up taking a couple of days — which was OK since I needed that time just to transition back to “real” life and get the hang of cold weather and the absence of snorkeling grounds outside my back door. Editing the photos down to a “mere” 470 and filling in the details from my notes turned out to be the perfect obsessive/compulsive transitional gig.

Note: I lost my camera on the very last day — turned out I left it under the seat in the rental car — so the set isn’t quite complete. Fortunately I had been backing up the camera’s contents to iPhoto throughout the trip, so had an almost complete set. Super-lucky news is that Budget Rent-a-Car in Lihue found the camera and is returning it to me; I’ll add the final images when it arrives. Thanks Budget!

June 21: Hanalei

Puff the Magic Dragon / lived by the sea
and frolicked in the autumn mist
in a land called Hanalei

Squint a bit and you’ll see the head of Puff the Magic Dragon in the photo above – the patch of red dirt is his right eyeball.

Hard to believe we’re actually here – nothing seems real, and yet it’s all so… real. The air is so clean, so deep. Vegetation absolutely exploding from every square inch of this volcanically twisted land. Spent the first week of our trip on the north shore of Kauai, on the brink of Hanalei Bay, home to the Puff the Magic Dragon. Beach just 200 yards from the house, down a narrow gecko-lined alley. Hanalei Bay is a well-protected, wide-mouthed sandy bay. The beach is never crowded, and there are few boats. An occasional stand-up paddle surfer, a team of outriggers drifting by. The water is clear and warm – exactly the Hawaii experience we imagined.

The lot of us dove into the bay almost immediately, warm and enveloping, the soup of life, where it all came from, kids ecstatic to be buffeted by small waves, sand ideal. Town of Hanalei just a few blocks away, perfectly convenient access to snorkel rentals, shave ice, coffee and cheeseburgers. Stocked up on fresh fruit for morning smoothies, which quickly became a staple.

Committed myself to swimming or diving daily… a promise that turned out to be effortless to keep. More often than not, I got wet at least once a day, and often two or three times. Some days found myself snorkeling before coffee – nothing clears the mind like a cool ocean dip, sharing the dawn with the critters of the reef. If night fell and I wanted more, sometimes headed out in the moonlight, skinny dipping just because I could, bobbing with the lights on the masts of sailboats moored in the harbor, feeling for the reef with bare toes, breathing in the salt air like I’d never get enough.

June 22: Uke Fest at Larry’s

Had been looking forward for weeks to sitting up late on muggy Hawaiian porches strumming a happy uke, but intentionally left my Fluke at home. Not that I don’t love my plastic-body ukulele, but had decided it was time to finally get serious and add a real Hawaiian ukulele to the collection.

Plan was to visit the legendary Larry’s Music in Kapa’a and pick up a koa wood Kamaka uke. Got more than we bargained for when proprietor Sam (who was hand-picked for the gig when Larry passed on) started dropping the science of frequency, intonation and resonance on us the minute we arrived. When I mentioned that the cigar box tenor I had recently built from a kit didn’t actually sound all that good, Sam was quick with “Sound is round. Round is sound. What did you expect from a cardboard box?” (I still love the cigar box for it home-made funkiness though).

Sam’s a great player, and knows more about extracting “the perfect sound” from the ukulele than anyone I’ve met. Super friendly guy too. Here he is playing the exact same Kamaka pineapple soprano I left the store with (just wish I could play like him):

Want to learn to play like that? Buy a uke from Larry’s and Sam invites you back for practically unlimited free lessons… an offer I took him up on the last day of our stay. He was able to tell immediately that I play the uke like someone who’s crossed over from guitar. I wanted pointers on breaking out of that pattern, and he had a bunch of great advice (for starters, keep your strumming hand open, and paint the strings, don’t attack them like you might on guitar).

I’m in love with the Kamaka, and fulfilled that part of the dream – played daily wherever I happened to land, on the back porch with the roosters, sunrise with a mango smoothie at my side, or after dinner with a cold one. Now just need to keep up the habit back home.

By the way, the word “ukulele” is pronounced “ooh-ke-leh-leh” in Hawaiian. Not sure how that pronunciation will play on the mainland, but love the sound of it.

June 23: Kalalau Trail

The Napali Coast is the mother of all mind-blowing geological features — 11 miles of impossibly craggy mountains dropping 1,000 feet into the sea, so huge and beautiful it can never be captured by photographs that do it anything like justice, must be experienced to be believed. Kicked off our Kauai experience with a two-family hike along the first 2.5 miles of the coast along the Kalalau Trail.

Parked at Ke’e beach and set off on a hike we’ll never forget, getting vertical straight away. 2.5 miles may be nothing on your favorite mainland mountain trail, but it’s different here. The terrain is a jumble of slippery mud, lava rock shelves and stepping stones, streams to cross, roots to grasp onto with bare knuckles. With every step, you’re suspended mid-way between an unforgiving sea below and equally unforgiving mountains above, rising a thousand feet, rippling with plant life and the surreality of millions years of creative erosion. Plants you’ve never dreamed of sprout from every crevice, strangely angled roots jutting out and under at oddly symmetrical 45-degree angles, bearing fruit and flowers right out of Avatar. The trail is unforgiving of mistakes, forcing you to wake up and pay attention every step of the way.

Maybe that’s why the kids did so well (the youngest in our group was only four) – there’s no opportunity for boredom or whining on the Kalalau – your feet are busy, your hands are busy, your eyes and brain are busy. And yet, it’s completely relaxing. You feel like you’re being washed clean of your workaday life, thrown back into the Pleistocene, being reminded with every step of your most basic organic, beautiful, funky self.

2.5 miles in, we found ourselves at a secluded beach with a small inlet safe to swim in. Good thing too – multiple signs warned us about how many swimmers had been dragged out to sea here, lost their lives to arrogance. My suspicion is that most people who die in Hawaiian waters come from places far from the ocean – people not raised understanding its power even in coastal areas less powerful than this. Also, I’m quite sure that most deaths occur during the big swell months, not in the summer when waves are far less formidable (we never saw the kind of surf that reaches up and grabs irreverent souls from the rocks). Enjoyed a modest picnic lunch and headed back on the return trip.

The most hard-core hikers won’t stop at this first beach though – they continue along the entire 11 miles of impossibly beautiful and challenging coastline to the end, then camp for a day or two before attempting the return trip. Someday I hope to return (perhaps when my boy is all grown up and stronger than me) and do the whole trail.

Each of us was fried but joyous at the end. So proud of the kids for making the journey.

June 24: Soy Ginger Ono

Mellow morning snorkeling nearby Anini Beach. Water not particularly clear, sea life not particularly abundant, but the kids got their first tastes of underwater life – seeds of inspiration to start a lifetime love of the ocean, the source of all life.

Later, off to see the lighthouse at Kilauea – an inspiring chunk of coastal history that stood for decades as the United States’ western-most beacon, visible 20 miles out to sea burning only a small amount oil, magnified and refracted infinitely through a maze of French-built Fresnel lenses.

Especially fascinated with the bearing mechanism that allowed 8 tons of glass to spin freely all those years. Imagine a bowl half full of water, with another bowl floating in it. Now spin the top bowl. OK, replace the water with 10 gallons of pure mercury, which has a far lower drag coefficient than water, and you get the picture – a nearly frictionless bearing that allowed the lens to rotate with the lightest touch. One pull of a cuckoo-clock pendulum weight allowed the lens to spin for hours. Downside: Mercury vapors are highly toxic, so care was taken not to allow the mechanism to become heated – a challenge when flame in an enclosed space is the whole point.

Great views of red-footed boobie habitat from the light house peninsula, and the thousands of reeling sea birds that live nearby.

Found first Hawaiian geocache in the vicinity, and picked up a travel bug that wants to visit lighthouses around the world, which I’ll bring back to California and set off toward Piedras Blancas.

For dinner grilled tropical Ono with soy ginger, shrimp with lemon and dill, pineapple rice, grilled zucchini and green onions. I love to grill, but am pretty much a propane feller — amazingly, at age 45, this was my first experience working with a charcoal grill.

June 25: Slack Key, Pushups

Up at 5:30, 75 pushups on the beach before 6:00 a.m. Skinny dipping in Hanalei Bay. Up with the roosters and misty morning fog swirling around lava peaks, ribbon waterfalls cascading hundreds of feet down straight cliffs. Sunrise golden orange against bottomless blue. Temperature a constant 75-80 degrees night and day. It rains pretty much every day here, but you’re never rained out. Want the weather to change in Kauai? Wait five minutes and it will. When you do get dumped on, it’s that warm tropical rain that dries in minutes, not the cold soaking kind that ruins your day.

To Tunnels Beach by 9:30 with families to turn kids onto “real” snorkeling. Millions of years ago, lava poured down the towering spires and cliffs above, straight into the sea, creating a complex of bubbles and tunnels and twisty passages (“all alike”) beneath the sea. The beach drops off quickly here – you’re bathing deep in moments. One sea turtle, a smattering of tropical fish — but the reef is solidified lava flow, not coral outcroppings.

Combined with the large number of tourista snorkelers, fish don’t seem overly attracted to Tunnels. Still, it was amazing to just dive deep, lingering as long as I could at the bottom of 30′ chasms, snaking slowly toward the surface through stone bubbles frozen in time.

Four days after quitting smoking (last one was at Phoneix airport), lung capacity already returning – amazed to find myself quickly ramping up through 15 seconds, then 30, 45 (didn’t get quite up to a minute but could see it happening with a couple weeks’ practice). Diving was something I did almost daily in my tweens and early twenties, ecstatic to be in the water again, like being reconnected with a long-lost version of myself.

Afternoon performance by slack-key guitar master Doug McMasters, who was playing an afternoon concert at a local community center. The slack-key style is quickly dying, as the younger generation of guitarists are more interested in rock or dance-hall mashups with Hawaiian style than they are in learning the old styles, which are fare more complex and take a lifetime to master.

Slack-key tunings were specific to various Hawaiian families, and kept secret for decades. Not in the family? You’d never learn the tuning. Today there are more then 75 of them documented, which makes it extraordinarily difficult to switch between them at a moment’s notice (slack-key masters are also masters of music theory almost by definition). McMasters blew us away not just with his clarity and precision, but also with has Aloha spirit – he just bubbled with love. Honored to have gotten to hear and see him.

June 26: Wailua Falls, Geocaching

Up at the crack of dawn for 30 minute trip south to Kapa’a, where we hooked up with a raft of kayaks and began a 45-minute paddle down the Wailua River and into the interior. Stopped at a landing pad and hiked another 30 minutes into the forest, through towering kudzu, swinging vines, meandering streams, purple and orange flowers to the “Secret Falls,” so-called because they’re only reachable by kayak and hike. Played with kids beneath water pounding 140 feet from the top, eating a well-earned snack of dried guava and mango, chips and cookies, fresh pineapple.

Back by noon in the midst of a huge rainstorm (the usual Kauai kind – warm and transient, always welcome). Highly recommend this 5-hour trip for anyone exploring Kauai for the first time — word is that people who rent kayaks rather than take the tour rarely find the Secret Falls on their own.

Hawaiian law says no individual or property owner can hog a beach for themselves — all beaches are public by definition. But the question of access to those beaches is a bit more murky. For example, start driving around in the artificial (“planned”) community of Princeville and you’ll find signs all over the place reading “Parking for residents only.” But get close enough to the coastline and you’ll eventually find a much smaller, more subtle sign reading “Public beach access –>” … in other words, you’re welcome to use our beaches, but you can’t park within a mile of them. Then, once you start down the trail, you’ll find signs saying things like “Warning: Treacherous trail ahead. Slippery, steep, falling rocks, unstable soil. You’ll probably die a gruesome death if you choose to continue. Proceed at your own risk. This trail not maintained by the Westin St. Francis condominium consortium.” Ignore the CYA signs written for trail wussies and continue. If you’ve already done the Kalalau Trail, these trails will seem like sidewalks in comparison.

The beaches and views you’ll gain access to are unbelievable – some of the most gorgeous on the island (of course the big money and “planned communities” naturally find themselves where the best beaches and views are… that’s how things work everywhere, right?). Spent three hours geocaching these trails and beaches and found each cove more glorious than the last. The triangular roots of the Hana tree make a perfect protected hiding place for an ammo can.

Peak of the day came toward sunset, when I found myself on the slippery descent to “Queen’s Bath” – a deep natural tidepool in a very wide lava shelf beneath a Princeville community. Unlike the similar configuration at Pools of Mokolea, Queen’s Bath is much larger and deeper – very swimmable.

It also doesn’t surge with the same ferocity, since it’s fed by water occasionally overlapping the sides of the pool, rather than being forced in through lava tubes. There were only a few people here when I arrived, and four of us spent time treading water in the sunset, talking didgeridoo construction and the power of music to clear psychic obstructions. Definitely one of the most spiritually satisfying moments of the trip (and there were many to choose from).

Takeaway: Even though all the places I visited tonight are on the map, and while most of them are listed in all the guidebooks, it was geocaching that got me to them. Over the four years I’ve been caching, I’ve found this true again and again – there is no better way to discover an area’s highlights more quickly, or to get up and close and personal with the wildest terrain a place has to offer. I’ve come to think of geocaching as a sort of hands-on guidebook for adventure tourists – a great way to discover the places the locals love the most. Between this and one other geocaching adventure day on the trip, easily half of my most amazing experiences were had thanks to geocaching.

June 27: Tunnels Beach, Sea Turtle

Returned to Tunnels Beach this morning for another snorkeling dip, not expecting anything more than we got the other day (lots of lava, limited coral, limited fish, limited colors). But one big difference today – finally spotted that elusive sea turtle in about 10′ of water. Dived gently down to it, reached out slowly, and was able to pet its back, then stroke its fins. The turtle’s big eye gazed directly into mine, then he dived down to around 40′. I came up for a breath, then followed him down again. We continued on like this for about 20 minutes, slowly circling the snorkeling area. Me diving and returning to join him repeatedly, him holding his breath for what seemed like forever.

The amazing thing about the breath-holding abilities of the Hawksbill is that he doesn’t hover around huffing and puffing when he returns to the surface. One quick exhale, one quick inhale, and he’s back down for another 10 minutes.

Photo by Ed Fladung (not me!)

One of the turtle’s rear flippers had been damaged, and was truncated just at the edge of his shell. This didn’t seem to slow him down a bit. Impressed by the lazy ways of the turtle – he just mosies around (at a turtle’s swim pace), nibbling tidbits off the reef edges, meandering and discovering. He never seemed bothered by my presence — possibly accustomed to all the snorkelers in the area, or maybe just an un-botherable kind of guy. Anyway, communing with the Honu was one of the peak experiences of our time in Kauai, and easily counts as a bucketlist item.

June 28: Broken Glass, Moloa’a Bay

Over the past few days, a steadily worsening sore throat has been settling in. Today awoke in the middle of the night to the most clenching pain in the back of the throat every time I swallowed – as though I were trying to chomp down on broken glass. Probably some combination of inner ear equalization problems I had on the plane flight in, followed by lots of snorkeling (which always involves a small amount of salt water gurgling around in the back of the throat), quitting smoking, changing sleep and excercise patterns, etc. All I knew was that I had to get to the hospital. Found our way to the emergency room in Kapa’a and had the most fantastic health care experience in memory – virtually no waiting, everyone super-friendly, my health plan accepted without question. Walked out with a prescription for antibiotics that cleared everything up over the course of the next few days.

Meanwhile, our first week had ended already, and we prepared to say goodbye to close friends who had stayed with us in Hanalei. Made our way down the coast to Moloa’a Bay, between Kiluea and Kapa’a. Our house for the second week was very different from the first. Far from shops and people, we traveled down several roads winding down through the jungle until we found a hidden dirt road leading through goat pastures. At the bottom of a flood plain, found our new house high up on stilts. In the back yard, a thatched massage pagoda and a pair of kayaks sitting in a freshwater canal – our trip to the beach from here on out would consist of a 1/4 mile paddle through arching palms and jumping frogs to the shores of Moloa’a Bay. We moved completely out of cell phone range for the second week (but finally had wi-fi access, which made a lot of the planning much easier).

One morning, strapped an HD camera to the bow of the canoe and recorded my daily “commute” to the nearby snorkeling grounds of Moloa’a Bay along the canal. Unfortunately, the auto-focus on the camera hugged the bow of the kayak, so the canal’s foliage is a bit out of focus, but you get the idea – bliss.

In fact, we were so remotely tucked away that there was simply no question of bad guys ever finding us. For the next week, we never closed a window or door, even when out for the entire day. We woke daily to humid breezes and the crowing of ever-present roosters. Kind of funny – thought I’d do lots of sleeping in on vacation, but did the opposite — I was in bed by 11 and up between 5:30 and 6:30 every day of vacation. And never felt more rested.

June 29: Gilligan’s Island, Ho’opi Falls

As if Moloa’a Bay weren’t incredible enough all on its own, it also happens to be the place where the pilot and first episode of Gilligan’s Island was filmed. Spent a LOT of time in its waters this week, and thought frequently of the professor and Mary Anne building a coconut radio on its shores, Gilligan doing prat falls into the canal.

The reefs of Kauai are all volcanic – you can almost see the lava cascading down from the top of nearby mountains and into the water, or bubbling up from below and freezing nearly instantly into abstract shapes that would be retained for the next 5-10 million years. The lava foundation gives rise to an infinite variety of shapes – tunnels and shelves and caves and blobs and squiggly areas to dive through – an underwater playground very different from the rock and coral reefs I’ve dived on in other parts of the world.

Don’t mean to say that free-diving Kauai is the most beautiful – I never found the water clarity all that stunning, and I didn’t find the variety of sea life as incredible as on the Great Barrier Reef or in Jamaica. But the terrain was unparalleled fun, and I had to prety much force myself out of the water each day – just couldn’t get enough.

Later in the day, made our way to Ho’opi Falls, a moderately sized fall in the midst of dense jungle. Nice hike, nice place to savor the richness of Kauai’s rain forests.

Once upon a time, young warriors would demonstrate their bravery by jumping from the top of the falls into the waters below. Fortunately this practice has stopped – it’s hard to imagine it happening without frequent serious injuries (I always shudder thinking about serious injuries before modern medicine – what it would be like to crack a skull and simply have no hospital to go to).

June 30: Waimea Canyon

Cutting an immense vertical swath up and down the east side of Kauai is Waimea Canyon, which Mark Twain called “The Grand Canyon of Kauai.” Like many of the world’s most expansive sights, the experience of being overwhelmed by an astonishing view much larger than any single person’s field of vision is what it’s all about, and no photograph can do it justice (but see Wikipedia for high-res horizontal panorama). You just have to be there.

In a way, this was the third side of the Napali Coast coin – we had seen it close up on our second day (on the Kalalau Trail), then from the water on our Zodiac tour day, then from above at Waimea Canyon. The only perspective missing was the helicopter view, which is allegedly incredible (and is the only way to see certain portions of the island), but way too expensive, but no matter – between these three views, we felt like we were able to take in the Napali Coast in almost every way possible.

As much as Waimea is a must-visit, getting there involves a lot of time in the car – first driving 3/4 of the way around the island (if you’re staying on the north shore), then driving its winding length. That’s not a horrible thing, but we really didn’t want to waste our island time couped up in a car. And after you hit the museum 3/4 of the way up the hill, the road goes to hell – I can pretty much guarantee that this road has more (and deeper) potholes than anything you’ve seen on the mainland in a long time.

Stopped for a nice hike halfway up, but were surprised at how un-Kauai-like the terrain and flora was – it really felt like a trail in the California Bay Area hills, or even Minnesota. Nice, but not the Hawaiian experience we were looking for.

Still, the ultimate pay-off is the view from the top, looking down onto Napali. It’s one of those views you just want to drink in with every molecule of eyeball you’ve got.

July 1: A Date With Fate

Woke before dawn and kayaked the quarter mile to Moloa’a beach to snorkel the reef. Spent 15 minutes trying to coax a reluctant rock lobster out of its hidey hole under a lava shelf, but it wouldn’t budge. Wasn’t sure about the legal – when is it lobster season in Hawaii? What’s the minimum length? Dad says you can “encourage” them out of their holes with a spear pretty easily, but it’s against the law of course. He also noted that if you pull straight out on their antennae they won’t snap off, but if you pull UP or to the side, they break off. Take care!

Struck out – paradise found and lost before breakfast. Kind of tough to feel blue in Hawaii though – islanders say they get depressed when really bad things happen… like if their mango gets a bruise when it falls from the tree in the backyard, or if they only see one rainbow in a whole day.

Off to see the water breathing dragon spout at Pools of Mokolea near Kiluaea Bay — walk gingerly across lava shelf where an old sugar cane processing plant used to be, stepping over rusty old parts from factory equipment. The hole in the shelf is 50 feet from the sea, connected by a long lava tube. Water and air pressure build up in the tube as the breakers roll in, and the upturned hole surges, breathes, spits, and coughs water at whoever is lucky enough to be nearby. Sat with legs dangling into the hole, letting the mist of the dragon’s breath flow over our legs.

I’m sure the Pools of Mokolea are a lot more intense when the surf is up – this is what it looks like in the summer, when the sea is almost glassy smooth (no swells over 2-3′).

Later, found the ultimate smoothie at Moloa’a Fruit Stand, called “Date with Fate,” consisting of mango, papaya, banana, coconut, dates, macadamia nuts, and Rice Dream. Will strive to reproduce this wonder of nutrition and flavor back on the mainland — will almost certainly not succeed.

To Kelia Beach for bodysurfing with Miles. Up to now, we’ve done almost all of our swimming in protected coves, which are great but lack waves. Since this is summer, even the unprotected beaches are pretty glassy, but two/three-footers were a nice improvement over the ripples we’ve been playing in. Miles took to bodysurfing like a monk seal to water.

July 2: Napali by Zodiac, Evening Luaua

Set off with Napali Shore Charters for the coast at 7 am with 13 others in a Willard 27 ft rigid fiberglass hull inflatable – the same boat used by the U.S. Navy (basically a big Zodiac). Had heard that this trip would become one of the highlights of our vacation – maybe of our lives – but was unprepared for just how incredible it would be.

We had hiked the first 2.5 miles of the Kalalau trail when we first arrived last week, so had a sense of how astonishing these mountains were from “within,” but seeing them from the sea was something completely different. There’s so much you just can’t see from land — sea caves, immense blown-out craters, small coves and beaches, and geological formations visible only from the vantage point of the water. And what had taken us half a day to hike on foot we accomplished in minutes from the Zodiac.

Like most great vistas, many of the formations we encountered can’t be done justice by any photograph, or by any number of words – they’re too big, too expansive for any lens or paragraph to describe. One formation that literally took our breath away was an 800-foot-high crater blown out of the side of the cliff by a former volcano. Half of the volcano had long-since fallen away, leaving only the concave contours of its interior. The remaining semi-conical wall provided a cross-sectional view of lava and rock striations, millennia of bird-shit, and punctuated by waterfalls spilling from various points in the cliff face. You know that tiny feeling you get sometimes when looking up at the stars? This cliff face gave us the same sensation of being an insignificant speck in the face of time and space. Captain Gary calls it the “Oh wow” cliff.

The snorkeling grounds were located pretty much at the end of the Napali coast as we headed west. The underwater terrain was somewhat familiar by now – lava that had spilled into the sea millions of years ago and cooled instantly, freezing into its bizarre shapes and twists and shelves and caves… but this area was deeper than similar reefs found at Anini or Tunnels Beach, not to mention less populated. Had less than 45 minutes to dive, but in that time encountered not one but three different sea turtles – one of them more than 3 feet long.

Wanted to see her belly and discovered something interesting – a sea turtle won’t let you! With six feet of water beneath her, tried swimming below and she began to arch and flip, keeping her hard shell back toward me at all times. We did a little dance in the water together, circling and flipping over one another as I tried to get a glance beneath. Turns out this is a defensive move – sharks will attack turtles from below, where they have less protection. So when a turtle spots a large moving mass like a shark or a human, she’ll twist to keep her soft belly facing the opposite direction. Kind of fun.

In 30′ feet of water, under a large lava overhang, found a massive school of 12″ parrot fish, brilliant green with yellow stripes and flourescent blue piping on their fins – so gorgeous to watch, and maddening when you can’t stay with them for more than 30-45 seconds (you still need 15 seconds for the trip to the surface, remember).

Just before returning to the boat, found myself face to face with a white-tipped shark, around four feet long. Unfortunately, it’s much harder to keep up with a shark than a turtle. Started swimming overhand to make tracks, but it was no use – could only stay with him for a minute before he slithered off into the deep. Still, it was a glorious opportunity – first dive with live sharks in my life. Hope it won’t be my last.

Photo of white-tipped reef shark by Petter Lindgren, not me.

The return trip was completely different from the trip out – the wind and sea had risen up to become a soup of waves in random vectors, making it pretty much impossible for our pilot to do anything to minimize the impact of their body blows. So we bounced and flew and just got completely, utterly, joyously soaked for the 90 minute return trip. Miles absolutely loved this, and was grinning from ear to ear the whole way back, while the rest of us gripped the stay-ropes for dear life. Exhausting, but one of those “so alive!” experiences you never forget.

On the way back, in the middle of Hanalei Bay where we had spent a lot of time swimming the previous week, Captain Gary stopped the boat to point out the real “Puff the Magic Dragon.” You sort of have to use your imagination, but if you squint real hard you can see one point of land as the dragon’s tail, a patch of Hawaiian red clay as his eye, a grove of Koa trees as his whiskers, and the mountains surrounding the bay as the humps of his back. Allegedly his tail is ends at the pilsner tap spout in a bar in a resort on the cliffs of Princeville. I choose to reject this reality and substitute my own.

Kilohana Luau

Hoping for an “authentic” Luau experience, made the wrong call and chose the one put on by Kilohana. Not that it was horrible, but it felt more like a Vegas show put on for tourists than an authentic Hawaiian experience. Dinner for ~400 people was served cafeteria style, under a great tent (OK, we were grateful for the tent since it did rain that night).

Once plates were cleared, the show began – not a few uke players and some hula dancers, but an extravagant production telling the story of ancient Hawaii through some hybrid of ancient and modern dance, with a full backing band and amplification. Don’t get me wrong – the show was great – but we were hoping for something more like sitting on a beach, enjoying casual relaxing music and eating from baskets with our hands. Ah well.

Highlight of the evening was watching the Kalua pig being unearthed from its lava rock and banana leaf steam pit.

Pig had been lowered into the earth early that morning, to steam all day in banana leaves and hot lava rocks. We arrived in time to see it unearthed.

July 3: Geocaching Kauai Coves

Already feeling the benefits of having quit smoking just under two weeks ago. One of the reasons my progress in the 100 Pushups program had stalled was because my recovery time had gotten so bad. There are supposed to be 60-90 seconds for rest in between each set, but I was finding that I needed much more than that. Amazingly, just two weeks after quitting smoking, I’ve already pushed out of the Week 3 Day 2 range and into Week 4 Day 2 (did 20, 25, 20, 20, 28 this morning).

Amy, Miles and Grandma wanted some downtime today, so I opted for a geocaching adventure. Headed for some coves to the north of Kelia Beach and spent hours wandering the red dirt trails and lava rock coves and bays. Stunning scenery and nice flat hiking (but HOT today!).

Kept overlapping with other geocaching families – something that doesn’t happen often on the mainland. At one point, ended up collaborating on a find with another couple, which was nice until it turned out they wanted to put “Drill Baby Drill” bumper stickers in it. Does not compute. How can a person who loves nature enough to want to geocache have this kind of attitude? And don’t they realize that children are geocachers too? Is this the kind of message they want to send? Threw up in my mouth a little and bit my tongue, said nothing.

After finishing the Kelia Beach circuit, headed for mountains west of Kapa’a, looking for some jungle action. Unfortunately, went without geocaching printouts or proper maps, so was kind of winging it – trying to follow GPS as close as I could to locate trail heads near mountain caches – a strategy that seemed to work at first but turned out … not so good. At top of a mountain road, came to some water towers, catching run-off from the many falls in the craggy mountains above. A local told me that, yes, I could take the trail around the backside of the towers all the way up to the falls, but that I should be careful since it was raining, and that meant flash floods could come down the mountain at any time. Told him I wouldn’t do anything stupid and that I would head for higher ground if rain started.

After experiencing the terrain, I realize that was probably easier said than done. Not that there were any flash floods that afternoon, but every trail I tried quickly petered out into impenetrable jungle. Kept getting stuck in dead ends with no way through the vegetation. Thought I could bushwhack my way to higher ground, but the only way up, it seemed, was to follow the creek bed itself. But that too proved impossible.

The afternoon turned into a comedy of errors as I tried again and again, without success, to make my way up the mountain. Had plenty of opportunities to exercise my Spidey Sense, but none to actually accomplish any elevation. To be honest, it was scary at times – finding myself in jungle so dense I couldn’t tell which way was up, and the sound of the water (my only homing beacon) became too faint to follow.

I’ve gotten myself into some pretty wooly situations in the Berkeley hills, but nothing like this. Finally gave up and decided to enjoy just being in the midst of insane terrain. Did encounter some wild taro patches though, got to ford some awesome creeks, and climb down a few (small but slippery) waterfalls.

This is what they mean by “impenetrable jungle” (imagine this thicket extending in a 360 degree sphere around you).

Finally gave up and headed in. Had promised to do some grilling for the family, but it was late, so brought home a basket of TnT Steak Burgers from a roadside stand (excellent).

After the family was asleep, headed back to the bay for a late night nudie dip in the brilliant moonlight.

As I was writing this that night, heard a loud chirp, then felt a plop on my arm — a gecko had dropped from the ceiling and landed on my arm, sat there with its tiny eyes staring me down, wondering what would happen next. House geckos are good things – they catch bugs – so set it loose on a wall and tumbled into bed, exhausted.

July 4: Miles the Kayak Pilot

Committed to having live, fresh-caught lobster for breakfast one morning. Kayak’d down to Moloa’a Bay to do some free diving. Last time here, had come face to face with a 12″ lobster, but was unsure what the rules in Hawaii were. Captain Gary on the Zodiac tour had straightened me out on that – any month with a “Y” in it is fair game. Since it’s now July, realized I could go for it.

In 45 minutes of diving, managed to locate two bugs. Unfortunately, both times I spotted them just as I ran out of breath, and when I returned they were nowhere to be seen. Elusive little beggars! Still, I love being in the water so much, could do this every day of my life. Few things make me feel so alive, so in touch with the earth and her bounty.

While finally heading in, spotted a large dark mass about 6′ away. Turned out to be another giant sea turtle – the biggest one I’d seen during our stay. Trailed him (her?) for about 10 minutes, descending and ascending in and amongst the reefs for as long as I could before heading back. It amazes me how trusting of humans the turtles seem to be – not a care in the world (unless you try to spy on their belly buttons).

Taught Miles (7) how to kayak – he’s been riding with us all week, but for the first time he got to be his own pilot. Did an absolutely smashing job. No capsizes, no major frustrations – took to it like a pontoon to water. Really impressed by our little guy.

Evening: Got to try a stand-up paddleboard. As the owner of the board paddled in to shore, I asked “Is that as fun as it looks?” “Probably dude,” he answered, “Try it as long as you want – just leave it on the beach when you’re done.” I’m usually really good at this type of thing, but stand-up paddling turned out harder than expected. Fell off five times in 10 minutes, then gave up. Still, had a great conversation with him later that evening. Ended up talking lobster with him:

“Sometimes the fishermen come in the evening and drape nets over the reefs, then return to snatch the tangled lobsters in the morning. When I see them doing that, I snorkel out and free all the bugs” (“bugs” being a colloquial term for lobsters). I decided not to pull any lobsters even if I do have the opportunity. Continued to seek out lobster hidey holes through the rest of the trip, but contented myself to watch them doing their thing in caves and under lava shelves, but didn’t touch them again – they’re more valuable just as they are, thriving in their perfect environment.

July 5: Zipline Through the Jungle

A “zipline” is a cable strung between two distant trees, along which you hang from a harness and pulley. Almost since my boy was born, I’ve had this bucketlist fantasy that I’d someday visit an “eco-tourism” location and together we’d careen through forest canopies.

Left our place at Moloa’a at 6:30 to meet with Outfitters Kauai on the south side of the island (Poipu) for a van ride to the interior, where we were strapped into mountain climbing harnesses and instructed in the basics of riding the lines. There’s much more to the scene than simple cables – they had constructed a well-planned Swiss Family Robinson array of steps and stairs, platforms and ladders in the heart of the jungle, overhanging creeks and waterfalls and forested wonderlands.

Truth be told, you don’t get a whole lot of zipline time for your money — rides last all of 30 seconds, and we got only five zips on a three-hour tour (“a three hour tour…”). But no matter – those 30 seconds are absolutely ecstatic. Position yourself on the edge of a platform, and when ready, hurl yourself off the edge into a waiting abyss, trusting the equipment with your life.

There are no accidents, there just aren’t. But your lizard brain doesn’t know that – your senses tell you you’re doing something wrong, stepping off a cliff into nothingness — hence the adrenaline. The thrill is in the battle between your rational mind, which knows you’re safe, and your instincts, which tell you you aren’t. The experience is indescribable.

Instructors encourage you to go crazy and hang upside down for max thrill quotient. And if you’re nice and small, as Miles was, they offer to throw you off the cliff (the “pirate toss,” they call it). Milked it for all it was worth.

Decided to shoot first-person video on my last jump (below), but kind of wish I hadn’t. The experience is so short that your attention shouldn’t be on trying to keep the camera upright – it needs to be on the ride. Note to self: If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t attempt to video the experience – I’d just have it. And I would have chosen the five-hour tour, not the three-hour version. The longer one includes an 1800-foot ride, the longest in the state.

Decided to just roll video for my last zipline trip of the day. Maybe a mistake since I was too focused on the video and not enough on the ride, but it is what it is.

Later, found ourselves at Puka Dog, home of what is easily the best hot dog I’ve ever tried. Instead of a typical bun, they push French rolls down over a hot spike to toast the interior, into which they squirt your choice of mango or coconut mustards and special sauces before poking all-beef dogs down into the “puka” (hole). Exquisite. Brought back a jar of their Lililkoi mustard.

Bellies full of awesome dogs, headed for Glass Beach, so-called because glass from a nearby junkyard washes up, ground smooth by years in the sea. What looks like sand from a distance turns out to be millions of pieces of brown and green and clear glass shards, worn down almost to sand by the ravages of water and time. A long way out of the way to see “almost-sand,” but quite beautiful in its own way.

Free-diving Moloa’a Bay later that day, another first – in peripheral vision, caught a black/white spotted fish with very large eyes – followed it into a hidey hole and realized it was a puffer fish (uninflated of course). Hung out with it for a while, wondering whether I could get it to puff up in self defense, but couldn’t. Still, amazing to see a living puffer in the wild. Will never look at the shellack’d variety in shell shops the same way again.

Very same day, spied yet another Honu (sea turtle), this one quite a bit larger than others I’d dived with — its shell more than three feet long. Drifted along with it for 10-15 minutes, trying to experience the sea like it did, bobbing from 30 feet to the surface. She’d stay down for 10 minutes or more, returning to the surface for a quick oxygen exchange without huffing and puffing, while I had to return every minute or so.

Later, heard Walter Egan’s “You are the magnet and I am steel” on the radio and caught Miles singing in the back seat: “You are the magnet and I am Steve.” Hearty laughs.

July 7: Final Smoothie, Kamokila

Time to use up the remainder of the fresh fruits we’d accumulated. This morning’s final (and pretty amazing) smoothie consisted of:

Mango
Pineapple
Mini bananas (“apple” bananas)
Macadamia nuts
Fresh lychee
Strawberry / guava juice

On our farewell trip to the sand and water of Moloa’a Bay, found myself in the midst of a massive school of some kind of silver fish, around 6″ long – must have been thousands of them in rush-hour traffic. I faced into the herd and they bifurcated paths around me, splitting off to left and right. Could actually hear the water rippling as they split their way through.

Tough to say good bye to the bay, knowing it would probably be many years before I was able to play in these waters again.

On the way to the airport, stopped for a few hours at Kamokila Hawaiian Village, an authentically preserved ancient Hawaiian village snuggled between Fern Grotto and the Opaeka’a waterfall on the Wailua River. The village itself consisted mainly of various Hale (houses) made of bamboo and thatch – warrior’s house, birthing house, sleeping house, menstrual house, etc.

But the most fascinating portion of this trip was actually the video shown at the end: Then There Were None – a documentary film on how the kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a bloodless coup by foreign businessmen over the course of a few decades. Astonishing to learn there are only around 8,000 full-blood native Hawaiians left in the world – a number that’s been diminishing steadily for decades under the influences of colonialism, tourism and interbreeding.

Not available on NetFlix but I wish it were – would encourage everyone to watch (the video is available for purchase however). In fact, was thinking how great it would be if this film were shown on airplanes as optional viewing to all travelers to Hawaii. So many of us visit thinking only of Aloha, great waves and diving, big hotels and expensive groceries, with little to no appreciation of the story of conquest of the islands, which mirrors the wipe-out process of so many native peoples coming into contact with western civ. for the first time.

Extra credit: Vocabulary

Not that I speak Klingon, but was sometimes struck by similarities between the Klingon language and Hawaiian:

Kapplah (Klingon): Today is a good day to die.
Kapa’a (Hawaiian): A town to the north of Lihue airport.

Uncanny. Miles and I made a game of trying to memorize a handful of useful Hawaiian words:

Hale – House
Hanu – Sea turtle
Kane – Man
Luau – Feast
Piko – Belly button
Puka – Hole
Ukulele (pronounced ooh-ke-leh-leh)
Wahine – Woman

Surpassed the 300 geocache finds marked, and then some. Also nabbed three “earthcaches,” which have no container or log but instead are about discovering and learning about some unique geological feature. Highlight of day – doing the multi-cache at the summit. After I had done the math and got to the final location, took the cap off a fencepost and was greeted not by the cache but by a colony of swarming earwigs, right out of a horror movie. Awshum.

Some devilishly clever containers today – like the normal-looking pinecone shown, and the fake plumbing – you had to remove the pipe assembly, then turn the valve and a Bison tube tumbled out. Loved it.

Slideshow above does not include captions – view set at Flickr for those.

Day got off to a bad start with horrendous Bay Area July 4th exodus traffic, overcast skies, and a starter string of three DNFs (Did Not Finds). But things quickly turned around – everything turned gorgeous when the sun came out, the caches kept getting better, and the hikes got longer. Favorite cache of the day was Crivens! – on a peninsula half-mile off the road. Trekking through walls of blackberry taller than me, out toward a perfect blue bay, with amazing views. While most caches are filled with forgettable geo-crap, this one had an excellent Mullet-scented air freshener (yes, that kind of mullet) and a USB “humping dog.”

The west side of the bay was quite a bit trickier, since most of the rim is in State Park area. Access to caches much harder than it appeared on a map. Decided to hike to Johnstone rather than pay the $6 parking fee. So glad I did – descended through deep dark woods with bluebirds and chipmunks, got some major heart pumping action on the way back up. Dropped off some travel bugs I had carried home from Minnesota.

The scene changed completely for the last cache of the day as I headed toward the Pacific side for Kehoe Beach earthcache. Suddenly it was about salt mist and jellyfish, sand and dense fog. Reminded me of Morro Bay. This one was a major geology lesson – needed to photograph quartz veins running through granite cliffs and read about five pages of text on the local geological forces to answer the questions needed to log the find. If I nail it, will be my first verified earthcache find.

Getting very close to hitting the elusive 300-cache mark… but I’d much rather spend two hours on a great hike for a single well-placed cache than do 15 parking lot drive-bys in the same amount of time. The key is to remain process-oriented, rather than goal-oriented, and never let the drive for numbers outweigh the joy of the great outdoors and honest exercise.

Wrapped day with a well-earned dinner of Full Sail and raw / BBQ’d oysters at Tony’s. BBQ’d is nice, but IMO the only way to show an oyster your full respect and attention is to eat it raw. Heaven.

Completely fried by end of day. Showered, fell onto couch, and watched the fantastic but campy 1971 eco-disaster sci-fi flick Silent Running ’till I passed out.

Animated route from GPS (combined driving/hiking):

(click Replay to view)

Click Replay for hike animation

Wrapped up the visit with a lovely 3-mile walk through Carver Park Reserve with the family and kids through rolling hills. Returned with a few tics and lots of great memories.

Farewell Ben – we’ll always miss you.

Finally got around to figuring out how to edit GPS tracks with Garmin Bobcat (stupidly renamed Garmin RoadTrip), and upload to TrailGuru:

(press Replay for trail animation). Elevation map screenshot from RoadTrip:

Elevation plot:

A few months ago, all of that started to change. Somewhere along the way, he began to realize that every hour out hiking was an hour not building Legos or making stories at home. And while he was good for five-milers from a very early age, at some point he figured out he could claim to be “tired” after the first 200 yards, and even that passive resistance (laying down in the middle of the trail) was an effective way of brining an excellent afternoon outing to a grinding halt. I’m not positive, but think he learned this from watching other kids do it on group outings. Big ears, and alla that.

It’s a drag. What for the past couple of years had seemed like the perfect father-son bonding activity had often become a wrestling match when it came to getting out of the house. Of course, he usually had fun once he hit the trail, but his little power plays to resist the very idea of going out have become both more strident and more devious. Along the way we mutually recognized that a certain amount of negotiations would do the trick: “If I go geocaching with you today will you play Lego Star Wars with me tonight?” (an excellent deal for me, since I secretly love playing Lego Star Wars).

But even that tactic may be losing its effectiveness. After Amy informed him that we were going to do a big hike tomorrow, he apparently complained: “The last day of Thanksgiving vacation, ruined by a hike? Why do you guys even think I like it? I’m not even an outdoors kind of guy!”

Ouch. Why don’t you just put me in a resting home right now, little squirt? Our Ultimate Bonding Activity, totally up-ended. OK, so you’re not into geocaching anymore. I can live with that. But “Not an outdoors kind of guy?” Where did you even learn an expression like that? And is that an example of genuine self-knowledge, or just an extension of increasingly sophisticated rhetorical ploys to let you stay home and play? And how can I make hiking feel more like play to you?

Well, Sid the Science Kid recently told you all about the importance of getting a good dose of cardio daily, and you seemed to buy that. But Sid or no Sid, just don’t wound your dear old dad like that, eh? Ouch.

One of the many unusual aspects of geocaching is the fact that it relies completely on the existence of a single web-based database, represented by the site geocaching.com. As web-based database applications go, the site is a modern marvel. The database represents hides, finds, people and their discovery logs, travel bugs (ID’d items that travel the world, hopping from container to container), and more, all sliced and diced a million ways to Sunday. The site is deeply geo-enabled, letting users hone in on hides near them, along a route, or near arbitrary destination locations. It’s also one of the best examples I’ve seen of useful Google Maps mashups, relying heavily on the open APIs provided by Google to integrate its cache database with Google’s map database. This is what map mashups are all about, and geocaching.com has done an amazing job with them.

As the popularity of personal GPSs rises, so does the game’s popularity. But when geocaching.com goes down (or slows down), so does the game, which involves more than half a million hides world-wide, and many millions of players. The site, which is, sadly, based on Microsoft database technology and ASP, does go down from time to time (big surprise); it’s a “single point of failure” in bit-space for the entire meat-space game – a precarious position.

We could – and probably should – have a separate discussion about ways to distribute the load and eliminate that single point of failure, either by replicating / load-balancing to other servers elsewhere in the world, or by coming up with a protocol and distributed architecture so the game isn’t in the hands of a single group to begin with. Discard the dependency on a single organization and open source the whole concept.

Lots of difficult problems to solve there, but save that thought for another day. These notes are about Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0 cultures. Yes, I know those terms are vague and scattered, but for these purposes I’m thinking about one key ingredient of Web 2.0: Open-ness, manifested in technology as interoperability between servers and clients via published APIs.

The ability for people to do cool things with data living on someone else’s server is what has enabled the rapid growth of cottage industries surrounding the most popular web 2.0 sites. There are dozens of external web sites and desktop/phone clients doing amazing stuff with the data living on Twitter. Facebook’s API is credited with the huge ramp-up in that site’s popularity over the past couple of years, as thousands of developers wrote applications to interoperate with the site. RSS/Atom have enabled countless opportunities for interoperability between sites. XML-RPC lets us create excellent desktop publishing tools for posting to blogs of all kinds, and to get our data into and out of web 2.0 sites. Google’s maps API has opened up a universe of possibilities for creative developers working on other sites. Flickr’s open API has created a vast cottage industry of external sites grabbing, slicing, and dicing data on Flickr in creative ways. When a site is built on top of structured data, that data should be available in programmatic ways. Open that gate and let the building begin. It’s not just about technology – it’s a mindset that opens doors.

Compare: In 2008, I can’t even get an RSS feed of my recent finds from geocaching.com. In fact, even though I can see my recent finds through the site, I can’t even create a distinct URL for that view of their data to give you here. Nor can I get an RSS feed of caches recently published in my area. In fact, geocaching.com doesn’t even seem to know that RSS exists – one of the most fundamental technologies on the web in the past eight years, completely missing.

Similarly, there is apparently no way for external sites or clients to programmatically retrieve data from the site. Since the day we first heard that 2nd-generation iPhones would come with a built-in GPS, many of us thought the iPhone would become the ultimate geocaching device, allowing us to go “paperless” from anywhere in the world, without loading up our GPSs with waypoint data before leaving the house. Instead, what we ended up with was a well-intentioned but anemic client called Geopher Lite – a noble attempt to create a geocaching application for the iPhone, but which fails spectacularly for one simple reason: While Geopher can easily determine your current location, it can’t pass that information to geocaching.com and get back a list of nearby caches. And if you select a cache with its built-in browser, it can’t get that cache’s coordinates into its own dataset. Geocaching.com is so closed down that even the most basic level of interoperability is impossible. It’s just sad.

I’m currently in the process of building a geocaching satellite site in Django (more details on that in the future). Not having an open API at geocaching.com is a major pain in the butt, and has put the kibosh on many of my plans. Shortly after getting started, I realized that if I had something as simple as a cache ID, such as GCK6F2, there was no way for me to construct an automated link to that cache’s page at geocaching.com — the cache ID isn’t even present in the unreadable hairball URL (geocaching.com apparently never got the memo that “URLs are architecture, and should be readable / elegant / meaningful). So I asked in the forums whether there was some kind of shortcut URL I could use to redirect from a known cache ID to a cache’s page. I did get a useful answer, but I also had not one, but two very experienced community members insinuate that I was a bad guy, probably intending on scraping the entire database for my nefarious purposes.

This blew my mind. The culture of the site is so web 1.0 that a basic question about interoperability was met with distrust. Not only is geocaching.com lacking the technology it needs to enter the web 2.0 world, it’s lacking the culture needed to support it. In 2008, interoperability between sites needs to be encouraged, not discouraged. Sad that geocaching.com’s traditional closed-ness has created this kind of culture.

There are many things I’d like to do with my project that I won’t be able to do as a result. But I do plan to respect the geocaching.com terms of service, even if I don’t agree with all of them.

The irony is that geocaching.com relies so heavily on the open APIs provided by Google and other mapping services, but provides no open-ness back to the web in return. Imagine using geocaching.com without the map mashups integration – it would be nearly impossible. One would think that the folks at geocaching.com would see their own mashups as an example of the great ideas that bloom when datasets and APIs are open and shared.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression – again, geocaching.com is an absolute marvel, and one of my favorite web database applications in the world. Hats off to everyone who’s labored on the site over the years; you’ve built something really incredible. I really do appreciate your work. But it’s time for change.

In a perfect world, geocaching.com would ditch the Microsoft technologies it’s sitting on and re-write the entire system in Django, being sure to build open, published APIs into every imaginable corner of the system. Then, to solve the reliability problems of the site, move it all into Google App Engine, solving the scaling problems for good (App Engine happens to love Django, but that’s coincidental). Finally, sit down with all of the geocaching.com employees and explain to them that it’s time for a culture shift — that it’s time to enter the world of open-ness and interoperability that transforms sites from walled gardens to thriving platforms. Then just sit back and watch as hundreds or thousands of add-on sites and services bloom, possibly leading to entirely new modes of geocaching.

I know, pie-in-the-sky stuff, not likely to happen. And I don’t like to come off as an armchair analyst, pretending to know what’s best for a site I don’t own or control. Re-building / rethinking geocaching.com would be a massive undertaking. I don’t want people telling me how I should throw away my labors of love and start over, so I’m loathe to suggest same for someone else’s project. On the other hand, geocaching.com is a resource for the web community, and it’s not keeping up with the technologies that drive modern web communities forward. I’m just dreaming aloud here – take it as such.

After a waffle breakfast with friends, spent Father’s Day with Miles and Amy at Redwood Regional Park, hiking down to the valley floor to get up close and personal with giant old growth redwoods. Not quite Muir Woods scale, but utterly spectacular. Found a small handful of geocaches along the way, including one locked deep inside a cow femur, which just added to the “dinosaurs have walked this path” atmosphere of the day. At one point near the valley floor, just a few dreamy rays of light were left penetrating to the forest floor. Miles started to get scared, convinced there were ghosts in the trees. Ascending 1,000 feet or so out of there was a much-needed workout, rewarded with eventually walking up and out of the canopy into broad daylight.

Later quenched our appetites at a local sushi bar — a landmark moment for us to be able to go to a restaurant without a kids menu. Stuffed myself on crab and avocado, then chili-infused dark chocolate (didn’t get the chocolate-covered ants I had wanted, but lightly salted Aztec Chili chocolate tiles are complex and dreamy). A glorious day. I love my family.

“If you ever want to find the longitude and latitude of a location on Google Maps, simply center the map to the location you want to find. You can even search an address and this will work. Then paste in this code into the URL field:

javascript:alert(window.gApplication.getMap().getCenter());

A pop-up box will appear with the longitude and latitude.”

Miles was on a mission to photograph his Bionicles in natural settings, so spent half the day shooting macros of various Phantoka (and their off-spring) hanging from trees. If that sentence means anything to you, you have a 5-10 year-old-boy.

Also encountered a 4′ bull snake in the middle of the path, soaking up the sun, completely content to be petted and photographed. After a minute, it slid calmly off into the weeds.

On the return trip, Miles and I ventured into deeper woodlands to find our 200th geocache (hard to believe we started just under a year ago; we’ve found all but ~30 of these together). It’s become a centerpiece of our bond, and he’s still surprised when he realizes that most kids have never been. Phoned our milestone into the Podcacher podcast, and Miles did the talking; hopefully we’ll get to hear his proud little voice on next week’s show.

Black Chasm was an amazing experience; years since I’ve been in a real cave, being stunned by mineral drapery, 200,000-year-old crystal extrusion, a pool of earth’s purest water 200 feet below glowing blue and green, inhabited only by sea monkeys. Got to Daffodil hill just as it entered it was entering waning stage, flowers just starting to think about drooping, but still beautiful. And catching a large male peacock in full strut, on a corrugated tin roof no less, was just stunning.

Flickr set

Great to see Jeremy Irish on the panel – Jeremy is the mastermind behind geocaching.com – the most sophisticated and original database-backed web site I know of – despite it being built in ASP (forgive us, Lord). Jeremy opened the session by showing the placard for the original geocache, and the OCB (Original Can of Beans) (food is no longer allowed in geocaches; ammunition and drugs are also barred).

Ryan Sarver – Skyhook Wireless. Conqwest game – similar to geocaching but more interactive with the real world, and with a big budget (clues on billboard, media buys, etc.)

Dennis – Created Vindigo (old Palm app for finding nearest restaurants – I remember using this). Pacmanhattan – grown men in Pacman suits. Plundr – search for wifi hotspots in your area and create an island. If you connect to the island wifi network you can buy and sell resources, goods (bananas, etc.). When you go and join another network, you can trade items between islands.

Location aware games are difficult to build. Require special software for phones and devices, sometimes cooperation of phone vendor, cities.

Nike+ – a GPS in your shoe. You can graph your run on a public map, share routes.

Can we make public art / graffitti into game pieces? Extending the idea to ski resorts – show ski map with gamepiece icons.

Some resorts now lend out GPSs with built in trail maps, that will tell you what lifts to take to get back to the lodge or to get to a certain lift.

Believability – running away from an invisible thing.

All real-world geo games have social implicatons — littering, or caches looking like pipe bombs.

During Q&A, I asked the panel about geo possibilities for journalists (beyond the obvious answer – geotagging photos). Responses:

Check out georss.org – protocol for adding lat/long to each RSS item in a feed.

Also Check out Steven Johnson’s outside.in: “So what is outside.in? In a phrase, it’s an attempt to collectively build the geographic Web, neighborhood by neighborhood.”

More:
whereigo.com – New geo game designed for modern GPSrs like the Colorado. Reference to Zork I didn’t get…

loki.com – “Free location-based search and navigation toolbar.”

where camp – at google plex – for the “geo curious.”