Our Hawaii Study: Round-up and Resources (Repost)

I published my first round-up list of our unit study of Hawaii back in 2015. Last year (okay, we actually only finished it up a couple of weeks ago, but we STARTED it last year!), the kids and I accomplished another unit study of Hawaii, and it was just as fun with older kids doing more advanced work.

Instead of making two separate unit study write-ups, I went back and revised my 2015 blog post on our Hawaii study to reflect all of the new activities that more advanced students can do, and the specific areas of interest to older students. 

This is that blog post!

This is an overall roundup of two different unit studies that the kids and I have worked through on the topic of Hawaii over the years. The first time we studied Hawaii was in preparation for our first visit there in 2015, when the kids were around the ages of nine and eleven.

The second time we studied Hawaii was in preparation for and after our second family visit to Hawaii, and specifically for the purpose of earning the Girl Scouts of Hawai'i Aloha fun patch. Earning the fun patch is really... well, fun!... but if your kids are older or have studied Hawaii before, then the requirements to earn it may not seem rigorous enough. I adjusted the requirements to be more rigorous and challenging while still fitting the eight themes that the patch program covers, which I'll tell you about below. You still want to follow along in the official patch program guide, because it contains valuable information written by the Girl Scouts of Hawaii to other Girl Scouts around the world, but you can substitute the actual activities.

Here we go, then!

1. Geography and Geology of Hawaii

A good beginning goal for a unit study is to memorize the location of Hawaii on a world map, to memorize the state symbols associated with Hawaii, and to understand the geology that has shaped it--and is continuing to shape it!

One of the larger geography activities in this section meets the Kaua'i requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

A. map of Hawaii

I printed out a giant map of Hawaii from Megamaps, and taped it together for the kids. They then painted the ocean and labeled the eight major islands:

I put their map on the wall and we used it for daily memory work to help the kids memorize the islands. 

When the kids did this project again in 2019 (because yes, giant mapmaking is still fun for thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds!), they were able to complete it entirely independently, and with this list of instructions giving them further locations to map to research, identify, and label:

1.       Label each island.

4.       Label the ocean.

5.       Label the following landmarks:

a.       Volcanoes National Park

b.       Hawaii’s state capital

c.       Pearl Harbor

d.       Pipeline

e.       Mauna Kea

f.        Mauna Loa

g.       Princeville (our resort!)

h.       Waimea Canyon

i.         Ka Lae

j.         Wailua River

k.       Napali Coast

In both studies, when we read about any interesting geographical feature of Hawaii, or made plans to visit some place such as Ka Lae, the southernmost point of the United States, I had the kids mark and label that site on the map. I think it helped orient them somewhat during our visits.

In preparation for each visit to Hawaii, I had the children look through several guidebooks to see what they wanted to visit. They actually enjoyed this activity more, however, when we were in Hawaii--how fun to look through a guidebook, point to something, say, "I want to go there!", and have the magic tree house rental van take you there right then!

If you want to focus on the ocean around Hawaii, the Blue Planet episodes "Coral Reefs" and "Coral Seas" are fantastic. Here's an interesting and simple demonstration of salt water vs. fresh water. 

B. Hawaii state symbols

I had the children memorize Hawaii's capital, and I printed this Hawaii state symbols coloring page for them to complete, although I had them research images of each of the symbols to get the colors correct, not just rely on the printed legend. And yes, we had to look up the pronunciation for many of the Hawaiian things that we studied! Here's how to pronounce the name of Hawaii's state bird.

In the process of this research, Will became very interested in the Hawaii state capitol building. We'd have gone to visit if it had been in session, because Will really wanted to see the representatives wearing Hawaiian shirts! The state capitol building's web site does have some activity books for children, although we didn't use them.

C. Volcanoes

The goal for this unit was to give the children a good working knowledge of the science and geology of volcanoes. 

One of these volcanoes activities meets the Hawai'i requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

The kids watched BrainPop videos on volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunami, taking the quizzes and completing the accompanying worksheets. Will and I used my DIY bendy yarn to mark the location of the Ring of Fire on our big world wall map, even though Hawaii's volcanoes are actually not due to the Ring of Fire.

Our underwater volcano demonstration works particularly well, as this is how the Hawaiian islands were formed. You can also make a gelatin volcano to model how eruptions work. And if you've never made a baking soda and vinegar volcano before, now is the time!

To see real volcanic activity really in Hawaii, check out these volcano webcams.

To connect Hawaii's history of volcanoes to its particular geography, make a corrugated cardboard topographic map of the Big Island. Those mountains are volcanoes!

If kids are very interested in the process of Hawaii's formation, here's a much more detailed and sophisticated lesson. 

We used these geography and geology resources:

        

2. Hawaiian culture

I knew that the kids were going to see some really inauthentic, touristy versions of Hawaiian culture on our trip, and that's fine, because those are iconic parts of a Hawaiian vacation, but I wanted the kids to also have an understanding of real Hawaiian culture and its value to the Hawaiian people.

If your kids are younger or like paper dolls, there's a Hawaii set in this cute collection. Might as well print all the dolls and explore all their cultures!

Here's a good place to start exploring Hawaii's myths and legends. Do more research on the specific ones that interest you.

A. Hawaiian language

It's important to understand that Hawaii has its own native language and native speakers of that language, especially because at one time native Hawaiians were actively dissuaded from participating in their own culture.

One language activity meets the Ni'ihau requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

I wanted the kids to understand that Hawaii has its own native language, one that is still very much alive on the islands, and I also wanted the kids to have a go at learning some words and phrases. To that end, they both spent several weeks working daily through the first lessons in Mango Languages: Hawaiian. I won't go so far as to claim that they're in any way conversational, but it was an excellent way to get them to immerse themselves in Hawaiian writing and pronunciation. Here they are practicing!

There's a terrific YouTube channel dedicated to teaching the Hawaiian language. We watched all of their videos several times, including this one, our favorite:

B. Hawaiian music

It's fun to listen to traditional Hawaiian music, but don't forget the musical artists who are Hawaiian, no matter the genre they perform in. Music is also a good segue into studying other aspects of Hawaii's history and culture.

One music activity meets the Kaho'olawe requirement of the Aloha fun patch.

I have a free account on Spotify, and I used it to let the kids listen to loads of Hawaiian music. Here's my Hawaii playlist with our favorite Hawaii-themed songs. This song, in particular, is the telling of the Hawaiian creation myth that we saw in the Bishop Museum.

If you want to make your own music, here's a great lesson on the 'ili'ile and how to use them. The ukulele is also an accessible and fairly affordable instrument. Syd was interested in learning, so I bought her this ukulele and this tuner, and off she went!

C. Hawaiian dance

To begin a study on hula, we found this intro video to be helpful. We then spent most of one morning watching YouTube videos from the Merrie Monarch festival, the world's premier hula dancing competition. Make sure that you watch performances by both women's groups and men's groups! We also did these hula tutorial videos together, and although Syd, surprisingly, did NOT enjoy them and in fact left the room in a strop, Will, surprisingly, LOVED them and happily danced along with me. This was actually really great, because there was a hula tutorial at our luau in Hawaii, and Will happily jumped right in, with the background knowledge that she likes doing the hula! If you're not planning to visit Hawaii, an excellent enrichment activity would be having the kids help plan an at-home luau, complete with roasted pork and hula dancing.

D. traditional foods of Hawaii

Hawaii has a fascinating food culture, not just of traditional dishes but also of dishes influenced by its immigrant cultures, by the crops grown by colonizing forces, and by foods eaten during wartime scarcity.

One traditional foods activity meets the Lana'i requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

Whether or not you get to actually go to Hawaii and eat the real deal--sushi! Spam! shave ice!--making at-home versions is really fun. You could make sushi, play with recipes that include Spam, learn about macaroni salad, or make your own shave ice. Do NOT forget the snow cap!

Kona Coffee is a huge deal on the Big Island. We toured Greenwell Farms during our trip, and I highly recommend it, but their website also has some great educational videos on coffee farming. Good enrichment activities for that would be teaching the kids how to grind coffee beans and make you a delicious cup of coffee, or baking a coffee cake or another treat that includes coffee as an ingredient.

The Aloha fun patch guide has instructions for hosting a luau, including recipes for what to serve. We did this for a family dinner one night and had a delicious time eating crock pot Kalua pork, haupia, and coconut cake.

E. sports and games

Surfing is an important part of Hawaii's history and culture, but there are other games historically played in Hawaii that are also fun to experience.

One sports and games activity meets the O'ahu requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

Syd, in particular, got really into watching big wave surfing videos on YouTube. 

We learned how to play two traditional games of Hawaii, konane and lu-lu. If your kids love math, you can use lu-lu to practice creating probability trees!

We used these additional resources to study Hawaii's culture:

     


2. Hawaiian history

The goals for this unit were to understand that Hawaii has a vast pre-colonial history, to understand that it was colonized and its sovereign government overthrown by the United States, and to understand its iconic role in World War 2. 

There's a terrific timeline of Hawaiian history in the Aloha fun patch book. The kids used it for a research project in which they picked one event to learn more about and teach to the rest of us.

A. Polynesians

Here's how we carved our own petroglyphs the easy way!

This tiki mask project isn't super authentic, but the results are fairly similar to the kinds of statues that you see at heiau, in particular. This tapa cloth is also made from paper and not bark, but it's still a fun activity.

The second time we studied Hawaii, we found ourselves interested in Captain Cook, here's a little more about him, and here's a Crash Course video about him:

B. Hawaiian monarchy

Unfortunately, this subject was difficult to find ample resources for outside of Hawaii, although once we were there we really did find ourselves immersed in the history of Hawaii's monarchy and were able to explore some wonderful places important to the monarchy and see some beautiful treasures.

I printed out this large infographic of Hawaii's monarchs and had the children put it on the wall under our map for easy reference. I also tried to get the kids to watch this American Experience episode on Hawaii's last queen, but it was super dry and didn't hold their interest. Matt and I later watched it by ourselves, and it hardly held my interest, either, but I wanted the information so I muscled through.

We used these resources on the Hawaiian monarchy:

  

C. Pearl Harbor

We actually incorporated this lesson into our larger study of World War 2, so you'll want to add in your own pre- and post-Pearl Harbor context to this lesson.

I wanted the kids to understand the logistics of the attack, of course, but I also wanted them to be able to visualize it, because that's how they'll remember. Much of our study took place at the actual Valor in the Pacific National Park, where the kids earned Junior Ranger badges and we took at ferry out to the USS Arizona Memorial. Will, especially, also really loved the Pacific Aviation Museum, and I appreciated being able to see some of the actual aircraft models used at Pearl Harbor and Midway. Both of these places have excellent online presences, as well. The kids didn't enjoy Tora! Tora! Tora! enough to watch the entire thing, but they did watch the Pearl Harbor attack, and it's a really, really accurate version.

We used these further resources to study Hawaii's history. In particular, all three of us adored Under the Blood-Red Sun--we listened to it on audiobook in the car, and the entire family was riveted.

    

4. Biology, botany, and ecology of Hawaii

For many kids, exploring the special plants and animals found in and around Hawaii is the most exciting part of this study. That exploration should go hand-in-hand with learning the importance of conservation.

One biology activity meets the Maui requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

A. ecology of Hawaii

The ecology of Hawaii is extremely important, extremely delicate and, in many places, extremely in danger. 

One ecology activity meets the Moloka'i requirement for the Aloha fun patch.

To help the kids understand the importance and fragility of Hawaii's ecology, I used some of the curriculum materials from the Moanalua Gardens Foundations. It's geared to an elementary audience, but since it covers topics that are more familiar to that elementary audience than they would be to children outside of Hawaii, much of it still works even for older learners. In particular, we played Ecosystem Encounters--the kids loved it, and we learned SO much about feral pigs and happy-face spiders!

If you don't have time for an entire lesson plan or even a board game about feral pigs and happy-face spiders, this Ted-Ed video about invasive species is very informative:

I had each of the kids spend a few school lessons looking up native Hawaiian plant or animal species and creating infographics about them using Piktochart. If kids are very interested in the subject, here's an entire lesson on Hawaii's endemic species, or a pdf board game about Hawaii's watershed.

B. seals

I also had Will read this biography of the monk seal KP2. I thought that it might be too dry for her, but she actually loved it, and when we looked up KP2's home, the Waikiki Aquarium, we saw that there's a webcam of him! We still watch KP2 sometimes!

C. whales

Whales are always fun and fascinating to study. To make the kids' fact-finding projects about whales more interesting, we measured their lengths out and drew them in chalk:

D. sharks

One summer, the kids and I fell down a rabbit hole and spent three months studying sharks. It was AMAZING!

Fun stuff

Here are some fun, non-educational resources that have Hawaii themes:

 

My favorite thing about a Hawaii study is that the subject is so rich that it adapts itself to all levels of learners and a wide variety of interests. Kids who love animals have so much to study in Hawaii! Kids who love volcanoes, too! And kids who love history, who love music and dance, who love storytelling... a study of Hawaii is a great way to engage any learner.

P.S. Want to know more about our adventures in learning, and the resources that we use to accomplish them? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Homeschool Science: Would a Blue Whale Fit in Your Driveway?

It would in ours!

Although, to be fair, we DO have a really long driveway...

Measuring whale lengths was the very last activity that I wanted the kids to complete to earn their Girl Scouts of Hawai'i Aloha fun patch, way back when it was actually a unit study based on our 2019 vacation to Kauai!

We just never got around to it last summer, though, and once autumn hit we had so many autumn things to look forward to that it was less tempting to dive back in. Now that we're spending so much more time on our property, however, and ESPECIALLY now that Will's AP exams are over (yay!), we actually do have the time to dive back into some of our unfinished business... and finish it up!

This activity was loosely based on the time that we drew life-sized dinosaurs all over a local park's basketball courts. My dream *had* been to go back to the basketball courts and draw life-sized whales, but we obeyed our governor's strictest stay-at-home order to the letter, and so to modify the activity to be able to be done on our own property, I wondered if we could measure life-size whale lengths on our driveway, and then just draw models of the whale next to its measurement.

Reader, we COULD!

I swear, these Smithsonian Handbooks are some of the best homeschooling resources that I own:

We have a whole stack of them. We used them constantly from the time the kids were toddlers... to today!

The kids each chose a couple of whales that interested them (fighting over who got to pick the narwhal, because OF COURSE), then I helped them measure that whale's length on our driveway.

Once they got the length measured, they focused on drawing a good model of their whale and learning its gross anatomy and some facts about it to share with everyone.

Here's Syd working on her blue whale, which does, indeed, just fit in our driveway!

I think everyone's favorite part of homeschooling is how we can interact with and love on our pets all day. They seem to know when the kids are doing something especially interesting or unusual, and they always want to join in!

Both kids really enjoyed this project!

Ah, here's one thing that I do NOT so much appreciate about homeschooling. Guess who's fighting again?

Someone threw a piece of chalk at her sister, and someone else kicked her sister. It's fine.

I also like homeschooling because generally, we're pretty chill about distractions here. Want to take a break from memorizing whale anatomy to chalk your father's freshly-washed hair?

It's art!

Spots also participated in Homeschool Art, which is what she gets for lying down on somebody's chalk rainbow:

Eventually, the kids remembered their whales, and finished their whales, and we all took a whale walk along the length of each whale, and then listened as each kid explained interesting facts about that whale's life and significant details of its anatomy:

And that's how we finally finished our unit study of Hawaii!

Six Months Ago: Teach Your Kids to Make Applesauce

One Year Ago: An Alice in Wonderland Birthday Party for She Who is Thirteen

Two Years Ago: Sports Legends and Space at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Three Years Ago: Physics and Force at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Four Years Ago: Homeschool Science: Zometool Crystallizations

Five Years Ago: I Let My Kids Drive the Lawnmower

Six Years Ago: Cahokia Mounds Homeschool Field Trip

Seven Years Ago: Zooming through the Montessori Green Series

Eight Years Ago: Geography with Montessori Pin Flags

Nine Years Ago: Tutorial: Easy Rainbow Cake

Ten Years Ago: My Child as a Confederate Soldier

Eleven Years Ago: Wildflowers, Interpreted

Twelve Years Ago: At Last, a Tie-Dyed Quilt!

Hawaii Unity Study: Make a Corrugated Cardboard Topographic Map of the Big Island

I know it's taken us almost a year to complete this unit study of Hawaii (including when we actually WENT to Hawaii in June 2019!), but this study has actually been a pretty comfortable one to keep on the back burner, just dipping into it every now and then when we've got a free hour or so in our school day.

It was easy, then, to look at my massive stash of corrugated cardboard Girl Scout cookie cases this winter, and think, "Hey! This would be a great time to talk about mapmaking and Hawaii!"

Our specific lesson was on contour maps, the circumstances under which you'd want to make or read one, and how to interpret the information--not super high-level stuff, but useful, practical knowledge for kids who have vastly more experience looking at hyper-real digital maps than they do black and white paper maps.

There are a lot of resources online for learning the basics of contour maps. This lesson specifically connects the study of contour maps to Hawaii, so was perfect for our purposes. This graphic shows common contour map topography linked to their elevation profiles. This USGS mapping system lets you dial down all the way to your neighborhood, seeing increasing layers of detail in the contour map as you go. Here's the USGS map legend so you can interpret what you see.

We also read a little bit from this book that I happened to have on hand. It isn't terribly rigorous but IS very clear!



Mostly just for fun, but also to make sure the kids internalized the connection between the 2D map and the 3D topography, I had them translate a 2D map into a 3D one, using this contour map of the Big Island of Hawaii as their template.

The process is dead simple: print that contour map of the Big Island as big as you'd like, then let the kids cut it up, trace the contour lines onto corrugated cardboard, cut the layers out--

--and hot glue them in place.

The result is a quite accurate and good-looking 3D representation!

I like the way that this overhead shot matches the 2D map:

To make the project more rigorous, you could require a higher level of craftsmanship by having the kid paint each layer, or label various features with toothpick flags. It would be especially interesting to map the Big Island's towns onto this, so you can see how elevation affects where people choose to live, or river and volcano features, so you can see how they affect topography, or even just the special and iconic tourist sites.

If you're including this in a deeper study of geology, you could even add the underwater elevations to your island--the Big Island would be massive if you mapped it from its true base!

If you've got a few kids or are in the mood for a super big project, you could even take the giant map of Hawaii project that we did here and translate the whole thing into a 3D contour map!

If you're not studying Hawaii specifically, you can give a kid much more ownership of the project by allowing her to choose what she'd like to map, and this would also make the project more rigorous as she'd have to figure out what to choose and how to source that contour map for reference. Or you could give the project a theme, and ask kids to build and compare different volcanoes, or different mountains.

I also like this project, which first has a kid build a model mountain, then slice it into elevations to draw the contour map. It would be fun to do this if you're reading a book that contains interesting and important topography--how cool would a map of Mordor be?!?

*wanders off to make a corrugated cardboard topographic map of Mordor*

Kauai Day #7: Last Things

I feel like I have a habit, on practically every trip, of barely taking photos on our last day. And so it continued for this trip. For some reason, I took a photo of our condo TV, because although I'd never actually pay for cable (that's a lie, because we bought cable one year during football season, but now that I'm thinking of it that was probably, like, a decade ago, so do with it what you will), whenever we're on vacation the kids and I can watch the snot out of Animal Planet, Travel Channel, Discovery Channel, and the one that's always showing those ridiculous home improvement or nonsensical house hunting shows.

I'm guessing this is Animal Planet, since Will is completely immersed in a rerun of the Westminster Dog Show:

We didn't have anything really pressing on our to-do list for our last day on Kauai. One of the places that I'd been wanting to look at was Queen's Bath, which was practically in our neighborhood, but when we drove by it the neighborhood association had the gate access to it closed and locked. The neighborhood ostensibly put the gate up to keep people from endangering themselves at Queen's Bath in dangerous conditions, but even the guidebook that I used as my bible insisted that the neighborhood made it a habit of keeping the gate locked almost all of the time, regardless of conditions at Queen's Bath. The kind of obvious speculation is that they just want to keep people out of their neighborhood and away from the water access, leaving them with an unofficially private coastline. So then people just trespass around the gate, and it's turned into a Thing.

Interestingly, while we were on Kauai a story blew up in the local newspaper about a church youth group that had all gone to Queen's Bath that week, WHILE THE GATE WAS LOCKED--GASP! The plot thickens when you find out that the group actually entered the path to Queen's Bath through a friend's property that is part of the neighborhood and that abuts the path, so technically they didn't "go around" the locked gate, AND it highlights the fact that when the gate is indefinitely locked, apparently the only people who can legally access what's supposed to legally be a public right-of-way are the adjacent property owners. AND it's apparently a wealthy neighborhood, so the whole thing just gets more culturally charged.

AND the church youth group? It's the one made famous by its portrayal in Soul Surfer, the biopic about the girl whose arm got bitten off by a shark while she surfed near her home on Kauai. She's apparently super religious and the movie was more about religious stuff than shark stuff (Syd and I watched it through the shark attack, and then kind of fast-forwarded through the religious parts to get to the interesting parts about her recovery and further adventures), and her super religious youth group leader--I just have to tell you that there's this whole part of the movie in which the kid bails on a youth mission trip because she wants to get more competitive with surfing and wants to practice more, her youth group leader totally makes her feel like crap for making that choice, and then, you guys, the shark attack happens DURING THE TIME PERIOD OF THAT MISSION TRIP. I swear, the movie absolutely makes it seem like this kid got bitten by a shark as Jesus karma for not engaging in missionary tourism.

Okay, I got distracted. The kid's youth group leader from Soul Surfer is the same youth group leader who took these kids to Queen's Bath. So it was interesting to follow the story in the newspaper because of that connection, too.

ANYWAY... no Queen's Bath for us, so instead we spent the morning at Anahola Beach Park. It's part of the designated Hawaiian Homelands and while there were a lot of people camping, there weren't any other tourists:

The above photo is somehow the only one that I took of Syd at this beach. If you zoom in, you can see that she's wearing her expensive Snorkel Bob rented goggles perched carelessly on the top of her head.

Now speak to yourself, in an ominous voice, "...And those goggles were never seen again."

Sigh.

I didn't get any photos of our spectacular sand fortress, or the last of the boogie boarding, or the shave ice place that we went to afterwards, or the open-air church nearby where the entire congregation was singing hymns and it was awesome, or the beach with the giant playground next to it, or the man-made ocean pool where you could swim right next to pounding waves without getting pounded yourself, or the beach where it wasn't safe to swim but was full of driftwood just above the high tide line.

Instead, I just have these last two photos of Will in the water--

--so we have to just remember the rest of it all by ourselves.

As also seems to be typical of my trips, the way back home was pure misery--over 16 hours of travel time, with everyone getting progressively crankier, and I don't know what it is about Matt+Will but they cannot get through more than 12 hours of airport travel without being at each other's throats, although at least this time no kind stranger approached me and offered to call the police for me, but if that same kind stranger had seen Will not once, but TWICE just completely leave our family and walk away without a word to anyone so that when we notice she's gone we have no idea where she is until she saunters back several minutes later and offhands that she'd just gone to the bathroom and has no idea why we're upset, and one of the times that she did this she was actually supposed to be WATCHING OUR LUGGAGE while Matt was getting food and Syd and I were in the bathroom, ourselves, so that Matt came back who knows how much time later to find our entire pile of luggage completely unattended and Will nowhere to be found... well, the stranger would probably offer to call an ambulance, instead, because I have never seen Matt so close to having a stroke.

Anyway, I *think* we came home with all of our luggage regardless, although all of my clothes look the same so who can tell, and the dog and cats were glad to see us, and I'm finally over the jet lag, so yay!

And tonight we're actually cooking an authentic Hawaiian luau menu, consisting of crock pot pork, coconut pudding, and white cake covered in shredded coconut. And mai tais, of course, although probably the locals don't actually drink mai tais that much, but the fact that a local told us what type of rum to use is good enough for me!

Kauai Day #1: Kilauea Lighthouse, 'Anini Beach, and a Spectacular Sunset

Kauai Day #2: Shave Ice, Sugarcane Ditches, and Strangers Dispensing Good Advice about Rum

Kauai Day #3: Snorkeling, Swimming, and I am Not a Good Spy

Kauai Day #4: The Ethics of Rum, A Boat Tour of the Na Pali Coast, and How Many Dramamine Did I Take?

Kauai Day #5: Seven Chickens, Two Beaches, Three Shave Ices, and Six Mostly Legitimately-Obtained Mason Jars

Kauai Day #6: All the Interesting Rocks

P.S. Want to follow along with all of our weird and wonderful trips, big and small? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page, where in a couple of weeks it'll be a few days of Cincinnati Zoo, fossil collecting, wildflower walks, bison, and Kentucky Horse Park!

Kauai Day #6: All the Interesting Rocks

Before we went on this vacation, I was telling some of my friends one day about all of the interesting sites that I hoped to see. There's an altar stone where some archaeologists theorize that human sacrifices may have taken place. Another heiau where it's easy to see the stone placed over the spot where a white dog was sacrificed and buried, marking the land as sacred. A couple of particular stones that royal woman had to give birth leaning on, or their children couldn't be chiefs, but if a commoner gave birth against them, her child WOULD be a chief. The remains of a fort that a kinda crazy German guy built for Russia, at the same time that he was low-key trying to take over the island and giving all the places German names. A canyon that's supposed to be a lot like the Grand Canyon.

One of my friends started laughing and said, "Everything that you want to see is some kind of rock!"

Indeed, it was, and on this day in Kauai, I got to see them all.

Note: Syd wrote in her travel journal that on this day "we drove around a lot and looked at a lot of boring stuff." Poor, sweet, child, forced to sightsee in paradise. Look closely at all the photos of her, and I'm sure you'll see that she was just absolutely miserable, the little lamb. And this is on top of the fact that our VERY FIRST STOP was to find the best bakery for malasadas on the entire island so we could buy them for her.

There are several heiau along the Wailua River, and although I wanted to see them all, I restrained myself. We've already seen a city of refuge on the Big Island, the solstice rocks are apparently buried in weeds, as is the bellstone, much of my company likely wouldn't appreciate the phallus stone, etc.

But Poli'ahu is well-mown, and best of all, it was built by the Menehune!

The Menehune are to Kauai something like what the Celts are to the United Kingdom: they're a historical first people that had contact with a later wave of settlers, whose descendants prospered and stayed and still exist, but because it happened so long ago and they had no written language at the time, folk storytelling has made them into an ahistorical people more magical than real.

Historians tend to get caught up in the part of the myth that portrays the Menehune as a little people, and will then claim that the Menehune couldn't have existed because there's no skeletal evidence of little people. But there is evidence of Hawaiian civilization that predates the settlers who became the native Hawaiians; for one thing, there are several structures on Hawaii built with engineering methods that the native Hawaiians didn't use, and several similarities between artifacts like these and what's been found on the Marquesas Islands. So it's reasonable to theorize that the Menehune were just people who did existed, were exterminate or just out-competed, and are now mainly legend.

Oh, another cool thing: in an 1800-era census, sixty-five entire people claimed Menehune as their race!

So did the Menehune build this? I'm going to say YES!

What was it for? WE DON'T KNOW! How cool is that?

There's a lovely lookout on the Wailua River here--

--as well as plenty of the obligatory feral chickens:

We went far enough upriver that we could see 'Opaeka'a Falls, but alas, you can't go all the way to the final, most important heiau, the one that's located directly on top of the wettest place on the planet. Ancient Hawaiians used to go there, slogging uphill through over 430 inches of rain a year, but it's a pretty impossible trek just to see a very interesting rock (with accompanying phallus stone, of COURSE), so instead we just looked at the pretty waterfall and then headed back to another set of very interesting rocks along the river, Holoholoku heiau:

Many historians theorize that humans were sacrificed here! Generally, it was supposed to be prisoners of war, but if there weren't any handy prisoners about the theory is that the executioner could sneak into some citizen's house at night and strangle him and there you go! Sacrifice!

Take a left and walk up the hill past this heiau, and you'll soon arrive at the Birthstones:

Here's where a little white dog was sacrificed and they put a rock on top of it to show that this is a holy place:

Here's Will showing disapproval of every single thing that I just said, because killing dogs is horrible:

Fun fact: the little white dogs were bred as sacrifices and as food, but they could also be companion animals, and sometimes THEY WOULD BREASTFEED FROM HUMANS.

And now you, too, know this. May you unknow it as quickly as you can.

Hey! Look at the Birthstones!

You could put your newborn's umbilical cord in a big crack there, and if a rat stole it before it had completely decomposed, then your baby would grow up to be a thief!

I can't tell what Will is looking at here. It's possible that she's simply trying to unknow all of these fun things that I've just told her:

I wanted to see something else built by the Menehune, so we drove to an overlook for the Menehune Fishpond:

It's an artificial pond blocked off from the river and used for aquaculture in ancient times:

Here we are right in front of it so you can't even see it!

On the way from Wailua River and towards the Spouting Horn, you can drive through the Tree Tunnel:

Once upon a time, a guy was landscaping his property with a zillion eucalyptus trees (this is an example of an introduced species, something that Hawaii is super vulnerable to and suffers from a LOT; the kids and I just studied this yesterday, and everything those islands have gone through with invasive species is absolutely bonkers), and when he had over 500 leftover after his project, he donated them to the county. They're supposedly a little worse for wear after a couple of hurricanes, but they're beautiful.

And now, Spouting Horn!

There used to be an even bigger blowhole next to Spouting Horn, but a sugarcane plantation owner had one of his employees bomb it with blasting powder because the salt spray was stunting just a few acres of his thousands of acres of sugarcane.

Asshole.

You can't really see it, even in my oh-so-impressive photo, below, but there were so many sea turtles happily swimming around here in the crazy-rough sea:

Here at Fresh Shave, we ate some very disappointing, and yet very hipster, shave ice:

They didn't have enough syrup, but they did have little mustaches attached to their paper straws, so I guess there's that.

And the adjacent hipster boutique had this, which made Will VERY happy:

The next thing on my list was a beach whose claim to fame is that it's near the location of a former dump.

That location means that lots of bottles got swept out to sea (sigh) and broken up and polished, and they wash ashore here. Look closely, and many of the little pebbles underfoot are actually pieces of sea glass:

You're not meant to take the historical artifacts, but apparently people do anyway, so the kids buried all of our best finds to keep them from looters, mwa-ha-ha:

Next up: Will's favorite place on the island!

And now she can say that she owns a book bought in the United States' Westernmost bookstore. AND it's Good Omens, which she has been wanting to read for several months but the waitlist for it at the library is super long on account of that Amazon Prime series.

Double win!

I got my own double win a little bit later, when it turned out that I could see Captain Cook's landing point AND Fort Elizabeth at the same stop!

And some chickens, because of course there are chickens:

Here is where Captain Cook first made landfall onto the islands of Hawaii:

And here is where this super-crazy German guy came to trade on behalf of Russia but instead got caught up in a hare-brained scheme to overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy and rule Kauai himself. He renamed a bunch of places with ridiculous German names and built a fort named after the Russian Empress Elizabeth, who was mostly notable for sleeping around a lot on her husband, who also slept around a lot.

You can hike inside the foundation--

--and up and over!

And look! Here we are back in sight of Niihau!

From here, we drove up a windy mountain road to the top of Waimea Drive and into Waimea Canyon State Park:

We're now on the other side of that mountain range from the morning, with the wettest spot on the planet between where we are now and where we began.

Here are our two people who dislike heights, sitting as far away from the edge as they can get and griping about us, most likely:

Here's my brave girl!

During our inner tubing adventure, the tour guides had told us that some of the best food on the island could be bought from the illicit food stalls at the entrance to the Waimea Canyon Lookout. Unfortunately, what with all my pit stops we didn't get there until late afternoon, when all the banana bread was sold out (ALAS!!!), but instead, they had a delicacy that I wouldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams.

They sold us fresh sugarcane!

To eat it, you chew it and it kind of collapses, releasing all its delicious juice:

It's VERY woody, so you chew and chew and chew and chew:

And then you spit the crushed, desiccated wood chunk into the paper bag that they gave you for just that purpose:

Seriously, the kids have been wanting to taste sugarcane since back before the last time we went to Hawaii! The reality was thrilling.

Also thrilling was the reality of these banana fritters:

Portrait of a picky girl:

On the way back down from the canyon overlook, the grandparents wanted to show us a spot that they'd discovered the last time they were in Kauai with my brother- and sister-in-law. It's a little stream that runs down red dirt hills, and it's the most beautiful thing on the island:

It is also possibly, as I might have discovered on a sign that I swear that I did not see until I was literally walking away from this place and back to the car, a man-made ditch and you're not supposed to be there. So... you know what, though? Whatever. It's the best place on the island and we all loved it and none of us got so much as a touch of rotovirus afterwards:

All that iron in the dirt--this is what it looks like on Mars!

Kauai Day #1: Kilauea Lighthouse, 'Anini Beach, and a Spectacular Sunset

Kauai Day #2: Shave Ice, Sugarcane Ditches, and Strangers Dispensing Good Advice about Rum

Kauai Day #3: Snorkeling, Swimming, and I am Not a Good Spy

Kauai Day #4: The Ethics of Rum, A Boat Tour of the Na Pali Coast, and How Many Dramamine Did I Take?

Kauai Day #5: Seven Chickens, Two Beaches, Three Shave Ices, and Six Mostly Legitimately-Obtained Mason Jars