Mahalo to the cast and crew of “Lost” for 6 wonderful years.  Personally I loved the finale and the wild ride that the television show brought to us.  To salute Lost I have dug out a picture from a memorable hike on the Pu’u Ma’eli’eli hiking trail were we ironically got lost and ended up coming across the famous hatch which was a thrilling moment since several of us are huge Lost fans.  Lost brought millions of dollars and thousands of jobs and tourists to Hawaii.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everybody.  I selected a picture with the most green I could find in honor of this special day.  If you trudge through this Bamboo forest on the Kaniakapupu hiking trail you may just come upon a Leprecon  and his pot of gold.   Maybe it only happens on St. Patrick’s day cause there was no gold for us.  Eat, drink and be merry cause today everybody is Irish.

We close out our Bob’s Hanauma Bay Ridge Full Moonwalk with this picture of the moon over Hanauma Bay.   This is an off the beaten path view taken from the ridge at an angle you usually don’t see the bay.  This was one of the more scenic walks as we got great views of both Hanauma and Maunalua Bay’s as well as the sunset and the full moon over the water.  Hope you enjoyed this series and hope to see those of you on Oahu on one of Bob’s future moonwalks.  Finally here are two panoramas I took on the moonwalk.  I’m pretty new to taken these types of pictures so helpful tips and pointers are appreciated.  Here are Hanauma Bay and Maunalua Bay.

Rays of sun light up Maunalua Bay as viewed from Hanauma Bay Ridge on Bob’s Moonwalk.  This gives the sun a heavenly glow and silhouettes the surrounding area.  Maunalua means “two mountains” which refer to Koko Head and Koko Crater, the prominent peaks on the east end of Maunalua Bay.   See our journey up to Koko Head.  The Maunalua region  has many cultural sites and the bay provides recreational activities such as canoeing, kayaking, diving, surfing and fishing.

Here we are on the top of Kuli`ou`ou Ridge with another spectacular ocean view.  Ridge hike are a lot of work with the uphills but it is always satisfying making it to the top and being rewarded with an awesome view.   For those with a GPS (or Google Earth) here is the Kuliouou Ridge GPS track of our hike courtesy of Thad.  Please do note at many times we do go off trail a bit to try to get a better view or as Thad says  to see where that thing that looks like a trail goes too.  Also check out my Kuliouou summit video.

I just love pictures across ridge lines where you can see the green of the mountains and the light blue of the sky and dark blue of the ocean.  I was especially happy in this shot since some part of the ridge are in shadow and other parts are in the sunlight.  The trail is quite a few switchbacks on the way up but is generally fairly wide and well graded you may even come across some trail runners or backpackers on the trail.  We will conclude out look tomorrow.  For those in Twitter be sure to follow @hawaiiblog for some bonus pictures this weekend.

Continuing our way up the Kuli`ou`ou Ridge trail and up and up… Most of the trail does seem to have an incline upward.   Here we are crossing through an area of pine trees and over a bunch of roots.  About 2/3 of the way up there is a shelter with some picnic tables you can rest at.  In the coming days we will look as some of the great views seen along the trail.  Like most ridge hikes this is best done on a nice clear day.

Today we begin a mini series on the Kuli`ou`ou Ridge Trail.  Located in Hawaii Kai the trail start at the hunter/hiker check-in station near the Board of Water Supply cable gate.  The trail is approximately 5.5 miles in length (round trip) and goes up to the Koolau summit.  It is considered a beginner to intermediate level hike largely due to the 1800 foot altitude gain.  As you will see in the coming days one of the best things about this hike is the amazing views.

Here is my picture of the full moon taken from Kamehame Ridge on Bob’s Moonwalk.   Due to the post sunset walk we got a view of the Waimanalo side of the island but it was too dark to photograph it.  I’ll have to go up one afternoon for more pictures.    We were rewarded with a beautiful full moon as it poked out between two layers of clouds.  Luckily the weather held out and we avoided any rain.

In honor of the LOST final season premiere we dig out a familiar sight from the early LOST years, the famous hatch.  While hiking on the Puu Ma’eli’eli trail we actually got lost ourselves probably because there were lots of paths that looked like the trail but were actually probably made to move cameras into positions to film LOST.  A couple of times I joked about finding the hatch then lo and behold we did and here it is.  I even got to go down into the hatch but instead  of a computer counting down from 108 minutes there were just mosquitoes.  Here is what you see.  Hope everybody enjoys the premiere tonight (on ABC)  and thanks to ABC and the producers for choosing Hawaii to film the six year run of this great show.