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BlackChampagne Home Buy Crap! I get 5%. Direct donations to cover hosting expenses are also accepted. Site Information --What is Black Champagne? --Cast of Characters & Things --Your First Time. --Design Notes --Quote of the Day Archive --Phrase of the Moment Archive --Site Feedback --Contact/Copyright Info Blog Archives --Blogger Archives: June 2005- --Old Monthly Archives: Jan 2002-May 2005 Reviews Section Movie Reviews (153) Ten Most Recent Film Reviews: --Infernal Affairs -- 5.5 --The Protector/Tom Yum Goong -- 6 --The Limey -- 8 --The Descent -- 6 --Oldboy -- 9.5 --Shaolin Deadly Kicks -- 7 --Mission Impossible III -- 7.5 --V for Vendetta -- 8.5 --Ghost in the Shell 2 -- 8 --Night Watch -- 7.5 Book Reviews (76) Five Most Recent Book Reviews: --Cat People -- 4 --Attack Poodles -- 5 --Caught Stealing -- 6 --The Dirt, by Motley Crue -- 7.5 --Harry Potter #6 -- 7 Photos Section --Flux Photos --Pet Photos (7 pages) --Home Decor Photos --Plant Photos --Vacation Photos (12 pages) Articles See all 234 articles here. Fiction Original horror and fantasy short stories. Mail Bags Index Page Features --Links --Slang: Internet --Slang: Dirty --Slang: Wankisms --Slang: Sex Acts --Slang: Fulldeckisms --Hot or Not? --Truths in Advertising Band Name Ratings (350 Rock Bands Listed) FAQ -- Feedback A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z Hellgate: London --The Unofficial HGL Site --The Hellgate Wiki Diablo II --The Unofficial Site --Flux's Decahedron --Middle Earth Mod
	BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Kauai Vacation Photos Tuesday, June 02, 2009 Kauai Vacation Photos I finished sorting through the few hundred photos I took in Kauai, and they've now been posted, along with captions that form a running narrative of my time in Kauai. Yes, it's almost as if I'm running actual website here, once in a while. Most of the photos are glorious outdoor scenery type stuff, and while I'm not a photographer and I have an old, battered camera, some of the pictures turned out pretty well. Page One and Page Two. Here are a few samples with the captions attached. Check the pages for about 90 more, many of them (including all but one excerpted here) are linked to huge, desktop-sized images of the prettiness. Plus there's semi-informative, occasionally snarky bullshit in the captions. Waimea Canyon is not as gorgeous as the Grand Canyon, in part due to the greenery. The Grand Canyon is gorgeous in large part due to the stark beauty of various colors of exposed rock. The rock on Waimea isn't so varied in color since it's much younger and was all produced fairly quickly by volcanic activity, and in any event, it rains so much that most of the exposed stratification is obscured by greenery. That said, the various scenic overlooks and hiking trails offer breathtaking vistas, even when the skies are overcast and parts of the canyon are obscured by fog. My best photo of the lot. It's not dramatic angles or trickery to make it look like this tree is growing on the edge of eternity. It actually is. This is one of the more perfectly photogenic Hawaiian beaches I saw. It's on the Botanical Garden property, and has become a turtle egg-laying location, in recent years. One of the cooler things in the park were these huge rooting trees. They were amazingly deep and straight, literally more than head height up near the trunk. In some places they were grown into enclosing shapes, like bathtubs. Our host told us that some early egg-hatching scenes in Jurassic Park were shot with these trees as the set. In fact, lots of that movie was filmed on Kauai and around the park. The starting sign. It does not lie. If anything, it greatly understates the character of the trail. I loved the trail and scenery, but didn't think that much of my travel time... until I started Googling the trail while writing this page up, and found people's stories about nearly dying on it. The whole trail is about 11 miles of incredibly winding, steep, constant rises and falls. There's no round trip; it's just one long ribbon that ends at an otherwise inaccesible beach (well, you could take a boat). Hardy folk hike out there in one day, stay overnight, and hike back the next. Most people, from the stories I've seen online, take 3 days to get there, stopping at some 2/3 point, or often taking 2 days to get back, they're so exhausted from the walking on day one. The heat and humidity are obvious factors, but most of the trouble comes from the terrain. It's just fantastically rocky, rough, rooty, jumbled, etc. You don't ever actually need to go on your hands and knees to get up or down anything (some of the boulders might require you to use your hands a bit), but it's basically a stairway, at least 50% of the time. Photos can hardly capture the angle and irregularity of the path, but I tried with a few, using other hikers for scale. Labels: vacation Posted by: Flux # 1:56 AM Comments: "I ended up cutting about a 12 foot length of one from a tree near our hotel and smuggling it back in my carry on luggage." And that's how all the invasive alien species ended up on Hawaii... captcha: stone #: 3:59 AM posted by Lanthanide From what I understand, the vast majority were brought in legally, simply because they didn't have laws against it until recently. At the botanical garden we visited there were signs saying that 90% of the plants now in Hawaii were introduced after Cook "discovered" the islands. At any rate, the one I took wasn't a native species, was a flourishing weed, and is sold in every nursery in the mainland US. They just don't have such huge leaves here. A trait I'm curious to investigate; genetics or environment? Or a combination. #: 4:57 AM posted by Flux Amazing photos. I never realized Hawaii had such diverse terrain. #: 1:25 PM posted by SageDarius I was more getting at the angle of individuals arbitrarily deciding to bring some particular plant or another to some other place for their own reasons, whether they liked the foliage or were going to grow it for commercial purposes etc, and failing to consider the further ramifications of their actions past their own self-interest. Then again we have very strict border control measures in NZ, so perhaps I've just been indoctrinated. #: 7:09 PM posted by Lanthanide Post a Comment << Home Archives May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2012

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