Beach Hike

Monday, 29-October-12, 10:30 Kauai Bike Path Hike

As this is the last entry in the blog labeled 4 days 16 miles, here is the mileage summary:
Friday:     8.5
Saturday: 2.5
Sunday:   4.3
Total:      15.3

The last hike of this trip the Kauai Bike Path. The embark point chosen was the "end" of the bike path which has an access point off the main highway past the Kealia beach (where there is good body and boogie board surfing). There is amble parking, rest rooms and water. Not knowing how far I would actually go, the gear list included one liter of water.

A nice wide sidewalk brings you down into a tunnel of what looks like kukui trees. Bikes, joggers, animals are allowed.

The tunnel of what I think are kukui trees. Not really sure. The shade was welcome and a nice breeze was appreciated. This is at the head of an intersection to the main bike path. I went to the left and took the bike path until the end, maybe 1/2 mile? Then turned around and proceeded in the direction of Kapaa / Wailua.

The remnants of an old pier what is believed to be named Kealia pier? Next to this is a Shearwater (bird) release point (no photo).

I ended this hike at this bridge. Continuing across the bridge would be to go in the Kapaa / Wailua direction.

And this is a small section of Kauai Bike Path.

What is a beach hike with no view of the ocean.

Distance estimation is 2.5 miles total. Total distance for this trip, 17.8 miles.
As the ending comment for the blog labeled 4 days 16 miles, I believe the 16 miles was slightly understated.

Waipoo Falls

Sunday, 28-October-12, 10:30 Waipoo Falls Hike

It is time to hike Waipoo Falls again, but this time starting from the Pu'u Hinahina Lookout trail head (no photo). Knowing this is to be done during the hot part of the day, the gear list included 2 liters of water. I've done this hike two years in a row. Both of these times were in the cool morning. Once was when the sun was low in the morning sky just after sun up. For these two earlier hikes, I also drove down this dirt road either to the very close proximity to the trail head or just off the fork in dirt road. This and the next photo is the dirt road that takes about 25 minutes (each way) off a foot hike.

With full knowledge that taking the Pu'u Hinahina trail head adds to the total distance, time needed and difficulty factor, I figured to do this in the late morning, pack additional water and take my time. As the hiking books and other sources mention, the Pu'u Hinahina trail head starts out slightly level, then quickly begins a decent.

With a decent usually means an ascent which is exactly the case. It was beginning to be the hot part of the day and the going was pretty tough on the ascent into the dual Cliff Trail, Black Pipe Trail heads. The gps had a decent signal but I was not able to get the track off the device. There are no photo's of the Pu'u Hinahina trail head or the trail itself.

This is the fork in the trail. Take the right fork to go the the falls. That is scratched into the sign. For the map readers and those with common sense, it is obvious that one should go to the right, it is the direction of the canyon!

The trees shown below are visible with google maps.

There was the familiar white ginger and other normal Kauai forest type of trees and bushes. The white ginger was very fragrant on this trip. It was helpful to cut a piece with the blossom's and leave in the rental car.

Protocol this time was a little different, gps was the priority the whole time. Unfortunately, the gps had a decent signal but I was not able to get this track off the device. One the way back, instead of taking the Pu'u Hinahina trail back to the lookout, I chose to take the dirt road back up to the main highway and walk along the main highway about 1/2 mile back to the look out.

Distance estimations are: Pu'u Hinahina .3 to Cliff lookout / Black Pipe Trail head,  Waipoo Falls round trip 3.0 , dirt road .5, paved road (.5), for a total of: 4.3 miles.

Kuilau Trail

Saturday, 27-October-12, 13:00 Kuilau Trail

The end of Highway 580 brings you to Wailua's Keahua Arboretum. I've wanted to do this hike for sometime. It is not as steep as the other hikes and has the added bonus of being a jungle hike. The trail is actually a wide road, so I'm not sure where "jungle hike" came from. Protocol was the same, gps on the way in, photo's on the way out. With full knowledge this is just over a mile in, one liter of water was all that was needed.

This trail can be (might be) classified as a wide dirt road. I believe it is permitted to mountain bike this as well. There was very little mud, if there was any, a slight course change to stay on the grass is all that was needed. Afternoon sun cast some nice shadows from the various plants.

Tree canopy was so high and is quite a sight. Many birds were up there chirping and singing away. Also the size of the tree trunks made sure these will not be blowing down anytime soon.

View of the trail on the way down.

Not to be confused in the overall photo sequence, this was taken at a turn-around point for me, near that 1.25 trail marker. These layers of canopy with the mountain background was really neat. I found it has a 3d effect and in person it is much better.

Then the afternoon sun showing the mist along these other ridges. Provides the depth of view and how far it goes on and on.

1.25 up, 1.25 back (2.5 miles).

Adding the 8.5 from the previous day, we are: 2 days, 11 miles.

Pihea and Awaawapuhi Trail

Friday, 26-Oct-12, 06:15 Pihea Trail

Started out the day leaving the hotel very early in the morning around 4:30 am. It was important to arrive at the trailhead before sunrise. It makes for a better experience. I did not have any water with me and water is number one priority. Kamakani Bakery (Thrifty Mart Bakery) opens at 0500 and has quite a selection of bakery items, lunch items and bottled water. I got two large bottles of water and a spam musubi (for breakfast once up the hill). The trip up the hill and to the end of the road went well. The only other person going up was someone going to work at the Air Guard.

What made the drive up the hill more interesting was a thunderstorm out in the ocean to the west and it was lighting up the sky. Better yet, the lookout is at 4000 plus feet elevation. It allowed for looking at the thunderstorm at the same level, instead of looking up at lightning, you could look as it was formed and on it’s way down. Arrival time at the end of the road was 5:50, approximately 30 minutes before sunrise and it was still dark. It was musubi time.

Once it started to get light enough to see, the gear list was checked, socks and hiker’s put on. Since the distance was only one mile in both directions, I just took a good long drink of water. I would need all that water later.  The gear list was simple a camera and gps.

Looking to the west are the familiar views that can be seen from Kalalau Lookout. Those clouds contained the thunderheads that provided the light show.

About half way into the hike, the sun made it's way up. There was plenty of light before hand to see the trail clearly.

Thought to take some shots of the morning mist over the ridges as they are warming up for the day. This actually marked the end of the trail for me. It does continue on up to the vista and other parts. I needed to turn around and actually save energy for the next hike.

The ever present wild life. Not sure if it is a hen or a nene. Did not seem to scared of a human and was content to continue pecking around. Eventually as I got closer, it cruised off into the security of the bush.

1 mile in, 1 mile out (2 miles).

Friday, 26-Oct-12, 08:30 Awaawapuhi Trail

Moving to the next hike, this is why I needed the full load of water. The protocol I followed for this round of hikes was to gps track on the way down and take photos on the way back. In most cases this worked out pretty well, as the rest period for a photo was welcome but had the tendency for a blurry photo due being being really tired. 

After a short 30 minutes (all down hill), I arrived at the end. This goat was not as surprised as I was. It was happy just to be out there traversing the dangerous cliffs. Did not want to scare it off so I made no sudden movements.

No need to tell me twice. I hope the workers who installed these signs had a horse or mule to bring down the material and installation equipment. Dragging that stuff up back up the trail would be a real drag. I rested here for 30 minutes and finished a one liter bottle of water and a Dr Pepper.

On the way back up and during one of many needed rest stops thought to at least take one photo of the trail.

This is a popular intersection. I chose to go in the same direction, up. The added mileage was not something I was planning on or prepared for. It was about a 2.5 hour upward march back to the trailhead. Once there, the hiker's and socks came off and slippers were put on. Cut three white ginger flower pods and called it morning.

3.25 down, 3.25 back (6.5 miles). I had to work hard for every step back.

Total for the morning, 8.5 miles.

Learning Java the mysqlUtils() class

This evening as dinner was cooking, a mysqlUtils() class was added as a part of my continued learning. It did not take long to add these two methods, utilSetConnection() and utilDisConnect().  Existing code was cut / pasted into these two methods to speed development.

As expected, the utilSetConnection() sets the mysql connection. Internally, the database user name, password and database name are hard coded. The return from utilSetConnection is a Connection handle. Once defined in static void main () the Connection handle can be passed to other methods, such as the utilDisConnect(conn). 

The utilDisConnect() simply closes the Connection handle as conn.close(). That's it. Well other than the conn.close() has to be in a try / catch exception type processing.

Am I happy with the method names, well, not that much. The names are easily changeable to become more consistant. Also, the consideration to having the utilSetConnection() accept three arguments. These would be  three String datatypes, name, password and database name.

As other methods are coded, these would be an insert, delete, select methods, the Connection handle will be passed in along with a table name, particular mysql statement. In the case of the select * from statement, the data will need to be returned into a vector list or to a text file. Since that will require additional thinking, that is on hold for a bit. 

This is the disconnection method.

       public int utilDisConnect(Connection conn) {

           

        try{

           conn.close();

        }

        catch (Exception e){

           System.err.println ("Cannot disconnect to server");

           return (1);

        }

        System.out.println ("Disconnected");

        return (0);

    }

The test driver needs to include this statement: import com.mysql.jdbc.Connection;

Then to use:

        Connection lconn;

        lconn=(Connection) myu.utilSetConnection("frank");

        myu.utilDisConnect(lconn);

Netbeans took care of casting the (Connection) as shown above. Not sure if that is standard JAVA practice. Having to review lots of source code, these cast's could get out of hand.

    

Continue Learning JAVA (a new approach)

From reading these blog entries, it's clear the trend is I am repeating myself quite often and not making any real progress. First there has not been a clear goal. Second, I find myself simply typing in or cut/paste from other sources. Sure these example programs are good in that it provides for repetition. With repetition, there  is some learning taking place. But not any depth. Third, there are specific programmatic weaknesses that I need to improve on. Understanding classes is one of these.

So what the go forward plan is stop using the example program method. Instead, (and I've already started) is to put together utility type classes, then call these from a test program. Figure lots of the basics will eventually coded into these utility classes and can be used over again. This will be helpful in that I'll have to code these only once and not get frustrated having to constantly find and re-code. An example is the dateUtils class.

As expected, this dateUtils class contains methods that return the time and date in various formats. These are most commonly used formats that I use are dd-MMM-yy,  hh:mm:ss  both combined, also POSIX time (number of seconds since UNIX epoch). One additional method accepts a hh:mm:ss and adds this to the current time. The return is the future time.

So in the test driver (uitest.java - the file with public static void main(String[] args) { ... }, I declare the following:


        dateUtils du = new dateUtils();
       
Calling each of the methods in the dateUtils file are done as follows:

        System.out.println(du.utilGetDateTime());
        System.out.println(du.utilDate());
        System.out.println(du.utilTime());
        System.out.println(du.utilEpoch());
        System.out.println(du.utilAddSecs(120));
        System.out.println(du.utilAddTime("12:34:56"));

Is this helpful? I think so. Of course there is a naming nomenclature irregularity as the class file is dateUtils.java and each method is called util(Something). It all works but a better naming convention may be in order. What has been helpful is all of the date / time formatting is done inside each of the methods so there was good experience gained.

Continue learning JAVA (more)

The interest the other night was to have two threads running and doing the same work. One thread is called AntennaThread, the other ReceiverThread. With unlimited time and some real focus, this program would do more than simply System.out.println() the fact it is in a thread along with a date / time stamp. The threads are running in an endless loop with a Thread.sleep(1000) in between each call to do work. There was a similar example out there in Internet land, so a cut/paste with a few adaptions made quick work.

The code sample was coded to run a socket connection out to some url on a port number. Having that work in a thread is a fairly good idea. Provides good overall JAVA experience with treads. So for my needs, the socket code was hacked out and replaced with a call to run an AntennaThread and ReceiverThread. A util class was coded to support the normal set / get methods, specifically a set method to set a polling interval [util.setPolling()] (within the endless loop), funny I had forgot to instantiate the method so my util.getPolling() always returned 0. It polled really quick!

A util.getTime() was added which returns the date / time as 12-Oct-12 12:30:00. Pretty helpful when logging Antenna or Receiver events. The recent work with Calendar c = new Calendar() and Date d = new Date() along with the SimpleDateFormat was very helpful. Every JAVA programmer needs to be familiar with that.

Driving factor behind this interest comes from a typical satellite ground control system. There are antennas the need to be pointed, receivers that need to have frequencies set and a multitude of other devices that require various setting and configurations. It is best to have this automated. The existing system I work on uses complex multi-thread driven device handlers to do this work. Interest is, can this be done with JAVA in a similar high level design.

This file is called t1.java and is a Netbeans project so it can be called up and worked on as needed. Additional work is to bring the socket code back in and have it read some url out there and simply stream in the url text. Even better is to extend the thread into a jPanel / jInternalFrame with a jTextField as the display. Oh, it will need a button or two in order to stop the thread. That would be pretty cool.

Continue learning JAVA

And it has been quite awhile since the last post, and that was a post of Andrew Jackson State Park. So as the months passed by and things at work have got more challenging, it was time to dust off the JAVA books and continue with learning the language.

Quite awhile ago (years in fact) I picked up this Deitel & Deitel, JAVA How to Program Third Edition. At first I was planning on tossing this book for reasons of not being really that happy with it. After manually typing in some of the demo programs, my mind was changed. It dealt with the technology I am most interested in. This would be JTables, JSpinners and interfacing with MySql.

When I took a JAVA class at Ventura College years ago, I was able to pick up JAVA in a nutshell, Third Edition that covers JAVA 1.2 and 1.3. So that tells you how long ago that JAVA class was. As a reference manual for simple things like strings, arrays, lists, calendar, dates, this is not too bad for reference as long as the code is not that sophisticated.

Finally, after scrubbing Amazon dot com for a decent JAVA book (more modern) I settled on Cay Horstmann, Core JAVA, Volume II, Advance Features, Eight Edition. Well, in my hasty nature, his Volume I book did not even register so I clicked the buy button, next thing you know Volume II arrived. Overall, pretty happy with that book.

So, what kind of progress has been made. As far as the JAVA / MySql interface, I'm pretty happy and feel fairly competent in that area. The Deitel & Deitel book had some good examples that were typed in and ran seemingly right out of the box. Here is the cut/paste from the code that connects as user frank with the same password.


public class AddressBook extends JFrame {
    private ControlPanel controls;
    private ScrollingPanel scrollArea;
    private JTextArea output;
    private String url;
    private Connection connect;
    private JScrollPane textpane;

    ... cut ...


        String driver = "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver", 
        url = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/address",
        user = "frank", 
        password = "frank";
                
        try{
        Class.forName(driver);
        connect = DriverManager.getConnection(url, user, password);
        output.append("Connection Successful");
        System.out.println("Connection Successful");
        }
        catch(ClassNotFoundException cn){
            output.append("Connection not successful\n"+cn.toString());
            System.out.println("Connection not Successful"+cn.toString());

        }
        catch(SQLException sq){
            output.append("Connection not successful\n"+sq.toString());
            System.out.println("Connection not Successful"+sq.toString());

        }
        catch(Exception ex){
            output.append("Connection not successful\n"+ex.toString());
            System.out.println("Connection not Successful"+ex.toString());

        }

This particular file that was typed in had several methods. The nerds would find this pretty straight forward. For me it was informative as the "Connection c" is the connection that is set in the code snippet above is passed in as an argument to each of the below methods. That is not a new concept for me, I'm used to coding functions, passing in all kinds of arguments, datatypes, opaque handles, etc. It is nice to know there is no difference with a JAVA Connection.


    public ControlPanel(Connection c, ScrollingPanel s, JTextArea t){
        setLayout(new GridLayout(1,5));
        
        findName = new JButton("Find");
        findName.addActionListener(new FindRecord(c,s,t));
        add(findName);
        
        addName = new JButton("Add");
        addName.addActionListener(new AddRecord(c,s,t));
        add(addName);
        
        updateName = new JButton("Update");
        updateName.addActionListener(new UpdateRecord(c,s,t));
        add(updateName);
        
        clear = new JButton("clear");
        clear.addActionListener(new ClearFields(s));
        add(clear);
        
        help = new JButton("help");
        help.addActionListener(new Help(t));
        add(help);
      
        System.out.println("ControlPanel:");

    }
}

So, in closing of this blog entry, the number one (only) take-away is the knowledge to connect to a database and the connection handle can be passed to other functions. My knowledge gap is to really understand Classes in JAVA. I have the concept down fairly well, since there are no structures, it is just kind of strange. With C++ no problem, got that understood (for not to sophisticated applications).

Andrew Jackson State Park

Just a walk in the park.

So I was back East visiting Cliff and Michelle and Hunter. On the Monday before I left, decided to finally check out Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster County, SC. It was just a few minutes down the road, a Monday morning and warm. I checked ahead of time and learned they open at 0900. After finishing up some lite shopping and comparing food prices between CA .vs SC at the nearby Harris Teeter, the time aprpoached 0900 and off I went.

Based on the time and state park personnel availability, there were three main points of attraction that were available: a one mile nature trail, mock up buildings of the time, the lake. I had pretty much all day to check this out, but managed to get it all done in about three hours. That included hanging out on a park bench listening to some tunes on the iPod. As far as other electronics, just had the cell phone. I left the trusty Garmin eTrex at home. No geocaching on this trip.

Very open trail, well maintained, suitable for jogging. Thankfully no ticks.  There were many thin spider webs. Being spring and all the forest canopy was not that heavy. Not sure if the gps would have coverage. Sometimes a lite forest can cause disruption. The sign said this was a one mile loop trail.

The bird sounds were pretty cool. I'd think that they were tweeting to one another. Did not see any critters other than a squirrel or two. Managed to take camera video with the bird sounds. Maybe as some point I'd try to upload those sounds.

The State Park has this cool lake that is about 25 minute walk around. Small aluminum boats can be rented as well as camp grounds. A few ducks were hanging out and a goose or two. Ducks are relatively friendly. They would peck any crumb's or random food items.

And finally, three pine cones.

Hiking

Not really a hike, but this is the closest label that fits. This was a second trip to Northern California and again took me to the Yuba City area. I stayed on base in a visiting officer quarters which was surprisingly next to Beale Lake (which I was unaware). There was some time before I needed to attend to an appointment. So I took a walk along a very well kept sidewalk and heard the sound of water. Being interested in all things water, this grabbed ahold of my attention. Not even an 1/8 mile down the sidewalk and this is what was presented to me.

A most excellent opportunity to test out digital SLR camera settings, mainly slowing the shutter speed so that the water would look silky. Thank you to all digital camera technology and the ability to hold 5000 photos. This provided a lot of storage space as many shutter speeds were tested. It was hard to decide which photo to post, eventually settled on the above. A co-worker is an photographer hobbist and takes photos of running water to see the water turn to silk. So I tried to do the same thing.

Here is the actual lake formed by the dam. No worries though, they have the "fish run" or whatever they call that water pathway so fish can make it upstream into this lake. This is the afternoon time around 6:15 pm. Lucky there was ample sunlight as this was my only opportunity. Peeking into the still water from above there were many fishes cruising around looking for things that little fish like to eat.

Looking down stream. Really nice bubbly brook sounds.

Once last view of the bridge and dam / waterfall. There is a more lengthly trail system. Since I had a time constraint, additional hiking will need to wait for later. I heard that this area of Northern California dries up pretty good in the summer and gets fairly warm. Guess my next trip will need to wait. I'd like to blog the trip up the I-5 the next time.

Kilauea Lighthouse

Another favorite Kauai destination is Kilauea Lighthouse. Omitting the technical details about this lighthouse as there is ample information about it on the web and many island guides. Thousands of people photograph this also. This photo was taken as the sun was rising early one morning. The sun rises to the right of this photo. Sunrise plus the iron in the soil really brings out the red color. Anyway, I think what makes this a favorite of mine is because what going here reminds me of.

Going back to the 1970's (was that a long time ago or what), we would do family day trips on a weekend from the west side of the island all the way to the northern side. These day trips took all day long and just to let readers know, it was not with a horse and buggy. Nope, we had cars back then too.

It also meant driving through the big cities of Lihue and Kapaa. So after being in the car for what seemed like hours (maybe a full hour and a half), it was rewarding to get out of the car. I can't remember if we stopped at either a Dairy Queen or McDee's along the way for a snack or drink or something. There were more Dairy Queen's than McDee's. You see, Kauai at one time only had one McDee's and we were there when it had it's grand opening.

The northern most part of the island is a generally a little cooler than the west side. High cliffs looking over the ocean was a little different than being right as sea level. Along with the crashing waves and the soaring sea birds, this was quite a treat. 

Kilauea is seemingly far away from Kekaha, the hot west side of the island. Driving back always meant the weekend was over and the new week was ahead of us. Seemed to take a long time to drive back and that we would get back to Kekaha in the late afternoon. 

JAVA and MySql

It has been along time since the last blog with the Programming label. Glad to report that for the n'th time I'm relearning JAVA programming again. This time I hope to remain relatively current. In order to make this n'th attempt more interesting, I'm taking the plunge and learning the JAVA and MySql interface with the added plus of a gui interface.

Glad to report that I've has success at the JAVA, MySql, gui work. It was not really that difficult, lots of information on the web and consulting the JAVA For Dummies Book, also the O'Reilly MySql CookBook. Some of the things I've needed are NetBeans and a MySql download.

Granted, this is not that much to look at. It is not extremely complex internally either. There are four JButtons, db Connect, db Disconnect, db Query, and db Insert, pluse three OK buttons. Basic functionality is that the user will press the db Connect button. Once connected, the user presses the db Query button. The database is read and fills in those three vertical like jText areas. The user selects the information that filles into those jTest areas and presses the OK button. As the OK's are pressed, those selections shows up in the long horizontal box at the bottom of the gui. Pressing the db Insert will insert the string into the database table. Finally, that little text box to the right of db Connect shows all program status.

The prepass, aos, los/prepass labels show the times in which the widget moves from state to state in the automated painting process. 

That's about all it does. Surprisingly, the difficult parts were not the database interfaces. What did I learn from this project. Good question. Well, for the most part was understanding and getting familiar with event processing - pressing the buttons. Extracting the text information in the text areas. Perhaps the one thing that stands out the most is that larger text area at the bottom. There is no api for appending to what is in the jtext area. So, after some long thought, it finally dawned on me...how about reading what is in there, storing that in a string, then append your new stuff to that string, then put in back in the jtext area. So, that way my big take-away.

Next project I hope to be a simple check book program. It has several opportunities for database read, write, delete. Possible some stored procedures or database triggers. Remember now, triggers can only be saved into a database as user root.

Hiking Sleeping Giant, Kauai

The Sleeping Giant hike is a Kauai hike that I find very physically difficult. This is due to the elevation gain (1200+ feet) in a seemingly short distance. Sleeping Giant is Nounou Mountain ridge. I had read about it on the internet and The Ultimate Kauai Guide Book, 7th edition. All the while growing up and driving past Sleeping Giant, I had no idea there was hiking. It just looked too impossible. At the time I was not into hiking. Maybe if I would have joined the hiking club in high school, I would have known different. So with that life experience behind me and a great appreciation for what Kauai offers, this is a really nice hike.


For me this hike demands respect due to the elevation gain, overall length and terrain features. The Nounou Mountain ridge is on the Wailua side of Kauai. 

The first time for hiking Sleeping Giant was what I call, "high school reunion time", September 2010. Following the guidance in The Ultimate Kauai Guide Book, trails dot com and google maps, I settled in on using the 1.5 mile West Trail (trail head). This was quite a first time adventure. As a first time on the trail and totally focused on having a great time, I missed the little sign that would have told me to turn left and head up the mountain. Instead, I followed the trail with took me along the base of Nounou Mountain. At some point, around 15 minutes worth, I decided to re-consult the book, the trail guide and gps. Making the decision to turn around and head back the other way, 15 minutes later, I literally stumbled on that little, ankle high trail marker directing me up the hill, right at the Cook Pines.

The second time,  I took the Kuamo'o -Nounou Trail 3.0 mile. This was August 2011. A much longer route that follows the base of Nounou Mountain, then starts the ascent begins at the Cook Pines, same as when taking the West Trail. This much longer route brought me through some interesting trail views and trail scenery. The trail takes you through a grassy pasture, a wide and well maintained foot bridge, then to the left which begins the trail. I would like to better articulate in words the trail experience. There is some elevation changes as the trail rounds the base, many different plant species, from ferns, ginger, guava, bamboo, and a tree with exposed roots that resembles dinosaur bones. This route takes you through a cool rain forest with mossy rocks to hot sun-baked hard packed trail. I would estimate this is around 1.5 miles. A good 30+ minutes later, that ankle high trail marker directs you up the hill, again, right at the Cook Pines.

The third way to ascend East Trail, 1.75 mile. I have not yet took this route. I hear it is the steepest way up the mountain.


From the Cook Pines and on up, the trail is clearly marked and (for me at least) is a serious cardio work out. It is steep and stays steep. I find myself resting frequently. I've seen younger and very fit people are basically jogging up. But resting is fine with me. I'm packing 2 liters of water and other stuff like camera's, maps, small guide book and of 
course the GPS. There are many trail turn outs to take in the view from mountains, the homes below and the ocean.

Eventually and at a very steep part of the trail brings you to a set of picnic tables which is a very good time to rest.          

The view of Wailua Bridge and Wailua River from 1200+ feet up.

The trail continues precariously along the top of this ridge to the top most part.

From the West Trail Head, and if I had taken the left turn at the Cook Pines, I'll estimate this took about 1.5 hours from Trail Head to the absolute end, atop the above rocky point. From the picnic tables back to the West Trail Head, 20 to 30 minutes, why not, it's all down hill.

Waipoo Falls Hike

Waipoo Falls is a favorite hike of mine. For the 30^th high school reunion and with full knowledge of the things I wanted to do was to hike to this popular waterfall. One of the more appealing reasons was to re-trace a required Boy Scout hike. Another was to simply enjoy the great outdoors that Kauai offers. The 2010 "reunion time hike" was fun. I also went back in 2011 to repeat the hike. The goal was to make sure my gps was in full view of satellites the whole time so that I could upload the track points into google maps. This way, the trail would show through the jungle. Thanks to Google Maps and Garmin for making this fun and possible.

I drove down the dirt (hard packed muddy) road at the Halemanu turnoff from Hwy 550 (below). Most people park near the turn off on either side of 550.  The popular hiking books and guides advise people to park. I choose to drive down the dirt road (conditions permitted this) in order to save some time. I suppose the next time I visit, I should also park near the turn off. Sorry for the blurry picture.

Driving down does save time, how much I do not know, I’ll estimate about 45 minutes round trip. So, when driving down, note that it is quite a bumpy and slick road. Usually, it’s more like a fast idle, 5-10 mph, 10 at the most! At a certain point, there will be a clearly marked trailhead sign directing you to turn right. Following that road a bit is the trailhead. Here is where I parked and where the gps track starts. 

I’m not saying I was in a rush to get to the waterfall and get back, but what I am saying I just wanted to get a good time estimate in the case where a person wants to get from point A to point B and back to point A again. It was interesting to have the gps track associated with the length of time. In this case, would you believe from point A (trailhead) to point B (waterfall) was about 25 minutes. I found the time pretty surprising. Did I mention that I started the hike a 7am.

While at the upper and lower waterfall, I just paused to enjoy the bubbling sound of the flowing water, chirping birds and the sound of ginger and other fauna blowing in the morning wind. People would probably ask, “your vacationing on Kauai, why are you getting up so early?” Fact is, this particular day for me started at 04:30 and left my room at 05:00. Catching the sunrise on the way up to Kokee was also important to me.

Catching a hike in the morning just as the sun is coming up, this trail offers peacefulness, the 100% pure air mixed with pure scents from the trees (do not know the name – ohia, eucalyptus, pine), sticky raspberry/blackberry bushes, ginger and other grasses. The soil, mud, bark also blends in to the pure air. There is little dust and no threatening bugs.

Does that ginger look fragrant or what!

This is a good ice-breaker hike that will not leave a person tired and ready to go back to the hotel and rest. It is essentially a “dog walk” around the neighborhood and it really gets me ready for another hike.  The part two to this trail (and hike experience) would be to veer right for the black pipe trail and omit the waterfall.

Left is Black Pipe Trail, Right is Waipoo Falls. Took the photo on the way back. Next time maybe the Black Pike Trail?