With so much beautiful scenery on offer, it can be hard to decide which Hawaiian beach you should visit to get the most gorgeous holiday (or beach wedding!) snaps. You can research through all the usual avenues, like reading travel blogs or speaking to people who’ve been there. But there’s another way to discover the most beautiful of Hawaii’s beaches: Instagram. Kris Labang, the owner of Hawaii Wedding Photography, discusses how a search of Instagram hashtags can reveal the most beautiful and popular beaches. I get it, but using Instagram as a guide (or any social media channel) comes with Read more
Molokai
I’m heading to the Hawaiian islands of Molokai and Lana’i next week, with five days scheduled for Molokai and three on Lanai. (Also perhaps four days on Maui to report on how things are going as they recover from the dreadful fires). I love both Molokai and Lana’i. Both are laid-back and super quiet, but they are quite different in many ways. Molokai is larger and has a good deal more geographic variety, including a moist east side, towering mountains, and the world’s tallest sea cliffs. About 7,400 people live on the island. Lanai is about one-half the size of Read more
This story originally appeared in Today’s Bride magazine. The Hawaiian islands are justifiably known as one of the most romantic places on earth; a land with deep green, jungle-clad mountains, golden beaches and sunsets in shades of pink and orange that don’t need any help from Photoshop. But which one is right for you? Read on for some tips from a travel writer and Hawai’i lover who’s been more than two dozen times. MAUI Sunsets are romantic just about anywhere in the world, but they’re especially dramatic on the west side of Maui, where puffy tropical clouds add just the Read more
It was a lovely, warm day on Molokai’s Kalauapapa peninsula last July, and I was getting a tour of the area from local resident Rick Schonely. Schonely, a musician and high school sports coach, is one of several Molokai residents who gives tours of the peninsula, an infamous spot where leprosy victims were exiled for decades, living in a state of quarantine that makes what we’re going through child’s play. The peninsula is now a U.S. National Historic Park, and you can only visit if you have a permit. It’s a very sad place, where people lived far from their Read more
With so many folks in the world not able to travel for a while, I’m dusting off some of my blog posts to provide folks with a bit of inspiration. Be sure to get back out there once we can fly and travel again. Here’s a post from the fall of 2017 on magical Molokai. MOLOKAI, HAWAII – I’m standing on the edge of a windswept cliff on the northwest edge of this Hawaiian island with a group of locals who are learning about efforts to restore the area’s natural ecology. The views are stunning, with craggy, brown-gray rocks plunging Read more
