Not Quite Naftan

To celebrate Chops' retirement, she has the honor of choosing the Sunday hike. She picks Naftan. We actually hike on Monday so everyone can recover from New Year's celebration. We group at the Capitol Hill post office parking lot to begin our first hike of 2012 at Hawaiian Rock. As we head to the airport through Dan Dan, "Wrong Way" Handy takes a turn into an exit road, right away we know we are in for an exciting day!

Waiting for Kento and W. Woman at Hawaiian Rock.

A quick left turn on the trail brings us to the impressive rock formation. This is Marcia's first visit to the "Split Rocks". Does anyone know the real name and history of this location? It looks so interesting, not just the split, but also the broken metal shards scattered in a large area.

Handy checks out the cliff edge.

Watching the rising sun over the waters, and taking a break to enjoy the scenery.

Double nuts that no one can identify. Chops will find out through her research.

After several attempts in finding the connecting route from the upper trail to the lower trail, we accidently stumble on the route, and spot remnants of bikers' old "see-saw". Once on the lower trail, we are lost as to which way to go. Handy makes an executive decision to turn right (west). We follow his lead. We find ourselves at the end of the trail on the road to Obyan Beach. Wrong way.

As Alice and Akiko are exhausted, and we still have a long way to go back, we all prop down right on the trail for a snack. Captain Charlie whips out a red tablecloth (part of the celebration for Chops) and put snacks on the cloth.

Never mind we may get run over by a truck, we are here to stay. Giggles is well prepared as usual, sharing beef jerkey, and tangerines. No wonder her backpack is so heavy! She is our official "foodie" hiker.

Mention "retirement" and Chops goes into an estatic cheer.

Chops chows down more chocolates...enjoying new diet for retirement life!

In case we did get run over, our bodies will spread in this order: Marcia, Giggles, Akiko, Alice, Handy, Captain Charlie, Chops, Cutie. We are a happy bunch.

After refreshment and feeling revived, we follow Giggles' lead to find where the lower trail will lead us. On the way, we take two off-shoots to explore where they will lead us. One of them take us right to the edge of a cliff that goes down to the beach. The cliff is accessible, with a little help from a rope that we can bring. We think the beach is on the far end of Obyan Beach. The second off-shoots takes us to a large concrete foundation that Giggles is checking out (above). We explore that area and find it very interesting, not knowing what the foundation is.

Part of the large foundation has a water trough. We are all very curious to know more about what we are looking at. The lower trail turns out to be a dead end! We turn around to find the entrance to the cross over route that will take us back to the upper trail.

After meandering back to the upper trail, it is pretty much an unanimous decision to give up going to the Point where the big gun is. At 4 1/2 hours of hiking, we break our hiking record, and truly start the new year with a Bang!

Good celebration for Chops!

Handy not only makes the wrong turn at San Vicente, he also renews his Frankenstein Speak: Titimana for Taotaomona :-)

Happy Trail,

CC