Hawaii’s Saddleback

Posted on October 21, 2009 in Vacation Fall 2009 Weather

Kona is the sunshine coast of the Big Island. Condos go up as fast as they did in 1990s Orange County (( Provided the land is not owned by the state or the federal government or the native Hawaiians)) . Leave downtown Kona on Highway190, however, and you quickly find yourself on the northern slopesof Mauna Loa. Cattle country, home of the Parker Ranch, a major Hawaiian beef producer and tourist attraction. A few miles shy of Waimea, another highway –numbered 200 — departs on the right for the rift between the two great mountains of the Big Island –Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.

Nowhere are the night stars as vibrant as they are upon Mauna Kea. The trouble is that to see this spectacle, you must hazard the Saddleback Road. You must know a few things about this thoroughfare. First, it was constructed by the military during the Second World War. The planners wanted to link Kona and Hilo without making it attractive to either the Japanese or civilians. So, they made the bridges narrow, the slopes steep, and the way winding. Second, crouched between the Kona Coast and the turnoff for the Mauna Kea observatory lie those weather phenomena known as clouds. We who live in the lowlands experience these gangs of water droplets from beneath, but the clouds of the northern end of the Saddleback Road wait on the road. When you meet them, they close in on you as fog.

Now imagine the hell of the highway designed by military experts who wanted to discourage you from driving on it staffed by the demons of low-flying pre-precipitation. Inflict upon yourself strange moments when lights from oncoming cars descend from the road in front of you or cows materialize in your desired path seemingly out of the stuff of water vapor. Consider the happiness you feel when you get to the Hilo side of the valley where the clouds have the good grace to dissolve into torrential rain.

Welcome to Hawaii’s Saddleback. The hazardous weather might make you yearn for raging brushfires like the ones that sweep California’s.