50 YEARS FOR THE FIFTIETH STATE

Aloha! It was 50 years ago today that Hawaii became our 50th state. There wasn't a lot of celebrating on Kauai...at least not that I was aware of. On Oahu they had a celebration at the Convention Center with speeches by the governor and the rest of the dignitaries but I would have thought there would have been a bigger deal made out of it. The local stations did produce a special show about the 50 years of Hawaii's statehood and the clips they showed on the commercials looked interesting but I had to choose between watching the show or writing in my blog and as you can see the blog won! It was a beautiful day on Kauai with temps in the low 80's and a nice breeze. It was so nice Jackie and I just had to get out and enjoy it a little so of course we went to Anini snorkeling. The tide was pretty low so getting to some of our favorite spots was a little bit of a challenge. As a matter of fact at one spot Jackie swam right over an eel! It wasn't the one in the video but was the same size and type as that one. We were swimming over the top of the reef in water that couldn't have been more than a foot deep when I noticed this eel. I had slowed down and and was preparing to take a few pics of it when Jackie swam by. She couldn't have been more than 6 inches from the eel when she swam by it! I think it startled her a little when I pointed the eel out to her and she was able to see just how close she had come to it! After we got back to shore we got the biggest kick out of watching some of local keikis fishing. There were 4 of them with the oldest being about 8 or 9 and the other 3 being 4 or 5. These little guys were using open faced reels and casting into the wind. Not sure how they managed to keep their reels from looking like a rats nest but they did! The oldest even caught what looked like an eel. It was about a foot long. Of course Jackie and I sat there for about a 1/2 hour watching them play and neither one of us was smart enough to take any pictures!