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View From Here - Hawaii Travel Blog - Sightseeing & Shopping

Welcome to View from Here, a travel blog, where I write about living in, traveling about and experiencing Hawaii as a malihini, a 12-year-resident of the Hawaiian Islands. My name is Kim Steutermann Rogers, and you're likely to find blog posts here about food--who doesn't like to eat?--and outdoor adventure. Like hiking through Haleakala on Maui. Diving with manta rays off Hawaii (Big) Island. Snorkeling Shark's Cove on Oahu. And paddling Napali Coast of my home island, Kauai. Not that I'm some, young, adrenaline junkie. Those days are long over. I just enjoy collecting life experiences. And that's why you probably won't find much in the way of shopping here, unless it's about a fantastic, locally-made product--like soap--and the charming, young, single-mother who makes it. Then, I gush on and on. Oh, as a warning, I can sometimes jump on my soap box and write about the realities of marine debris, Hawaii's endangered species--like humpback whales and Hawaiian monk seals--great book discoveries and the wonders of nature. And my dogs.

Total Number of Entries - 57

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My Earth Day Celebration

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Fri 4/26/2013

Destination: Kauai

Hawaii is nature and nature is Hawaii. You've got your turquoise blue ocean with beaches of black, green and red sand. You've got your green mountains striated with hiking trails. Your rivers and streams ripe for kayaking explorations. Waterfalls. Botanical gardens. Nature preserves, wildlife refuges and national parks. With so many choices in which to spend Earth Day, how was it that on Monday, April 22, I found myself sitting in an air conditioned office building with fluorescent lights making my eyes burn?
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The Trail to Kaniakapupu Palace

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Fri 4/12/2013

Destination: Oahu

Like Kaniakapupu, the summer palace of King Kamehameha III and his wife Queen Kalama, in Nuuanu. It was built in 1845. According to the plaque in front of the crumbling rock wall ruins, the palace—a term to be taken loosely—was a place for parties. The biggest of which took place in 1847 to celebrate Hawaiian Restoration Day.
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Rubbernecking at Kilauea Volcano

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Fri 10/26/2012

Destination: Hawaii Island

On my last visit a few weeks ago, Halemaumau Trail was closed at the seam where the trail’s descent through a shady rainforest met up with the desolate crater floor, a demarcation line as distinct as blue and red in this upcoming election. A few years ago, a lava lake at the southeastern end of Halemaumau Crater started to generate excitement. It split open the crater floor and has grown to nearly 500 feet in diameter and more than 600 feet deep. This “pit within a pit” is the reason for the glow that is visible after sunset from the Jagger Museum. This week, I read that the level of this lava lake was rising quickly and threatened to flood the floor of Halemaumau Crater.
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Odyssey of a Hawaiian Monk Seal and a Volunteer in Waikiki

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Wed 10/24/2012

Destination: Oahu

The sky above Diamond Head had just started to pink when I hit Kalakaua Avenue for my morning walk. I wasn't alone. Surfers bobbed on the waters off Waikiki Beach, which, I quickly noticed, rippled with a late-season south swell. Dogs had hit the streets, too. One particular chocolate Lab strained at its leash, its head cranked toward the ocean, yearning and excitement oozing from its whole body. On the beach, a group of Japanese soccer players ran drills. Another man was inventing a new form of stretching exercise.
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Cheating Death inside Halemaumau Crater

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Tue 10/2/2012

Destination: Hawaii Island

Halemaumau Trail at Volcanoes National Park starts at the historic Volcano House hotel and drops 425 feet to the crater floor in less than one mile. It’s known as the oldest of the park’s many hiking trails and likely the very same one that Mark Twain and Isabella Bird descended in 1866 and 1873, respectively. That’s all I needed to hear.
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The Coco Palms: 20 Years after Hurricane Iniki

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Tue 9/11/2012

Destination: Kauai

September 11, 2012 marks the 20th anniversary that Hurricane Iniki made landfall on Kauai, clocking 145 mph winds and gusts topping 230 mph. According to yesterday's article in The Garden Island, six fatalies were blamed on Iniki. Damages totaled more than $1.8 billion, including the loss of 1,400 homes and severe damage to 5,000 more.
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Why I Chased the Transit of Venus

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Fri 6/29/2012

Destination: Kauai

June 5, 2012, started clear and sunny, as summer days do in Hawaii. Perfect for a day at the beach. Perfect for a sunburn, if you weren’t careful. And perfect for observing the planet Venus as it made its transit between the Earth and the sun. For about six-and-a-half hours, a dark spot would blemish the sun, looking like a perfect circle, no more than a freckle, really. Peering through a telescope, you might have mistaken the transit of Venus as possibly a mole on the very pregnant belly of a woman.
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Kilauea Point Lighthouse Lens Revealed Again

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Tue 2/21/2012

Destination: Kauai

The wood finally came down. After a year-and-a-half behind a dome of plywood, the Kilauea Point Lighthouse lens is once again visible through its glass lantern room.
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World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Fri 2/17/2012

Destination: Oahu

Last week, on a day when rain fell heavy from the sky, I explored the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument. You might know the place as, simply, “Pearl Harbor,” where the USS Arizona Memorial resides over a warship that sank in less than nine minutes on December 7, 1941, a sunny day when what fell from the sky were bombs. One such explosive--a 1,760-pound armor-piercing bomb--blasted through the deck of the USS Arizona and entombed a crew of 1,177 men. The ship burned for three days afterward. It sits today where it came to rest 70 years ago.
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70th Anniversary Pearl Harbor Commemoration

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Wed 12/7/2011

Destination: Oahu

Today, under a bright and sunny Hawaii sky more than 5000 people attended the 70th Anniversary Pearl Harbor Commemoration to recognize 120 survivors of the “day of infamy,” December 7, 1941. They were easy to identify: Most wore a hat with the word “survivor” embroidered across it.
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