Waikolohe Valley at Aulani in Hawaii
A rock formation rises in the distance as a stream flows through the Waikolohe Valley at the Disney resort of Aulani in Hawaiʻi.
Actually, the Waikolohe Valley is the name of the pool area in between the two Aulani towers. If you know Disney, you know they have a name and a backstory for everything instead of just “pool area”. So the mountain off to the side is known as Puʻu Kilo, the stream (a lazy river tube ride) is Waikolohe Stream, and the main pool (that is not visible here) is the Waikolohe Pool. The wooden structure that you can see sticking up through the trees is the Menehune Bridge, which was designed for youngsters, a group to which we did not belong.
Plus, you can climb stairs in Puʻu Kilo to find two different slides, whose names I could not find when I was writing the Hawaiʻi 2023 Trip Report. Tubestone Curl is a tube slide that all four of us experienced several times, and Volcanic Verical is an enclosed body slide that Laura and Karen experienced once. Of course, we never called them by those names while we were there, but we all still managed to know what we were talking about.
Another View
Here is another view, this time to the left of the first view. Both of these photos were taken from the back porch of the Makaʻala lobby building. I slightly prefer the first photo, because it includes the Waiʻanae Tower where our rooms were located. This second photo features the ʻEwa Tower across from ours. But then if we had stayed in ʻEwa Tower, I probably would have liked this second photo more.
As I mentioned above, everything has a name. And unless my Google Translate skills are lacking, Waikolohe roughly translates to “flood”. If you break the word down to its roots (I never did have an etymology class in high school, so etymology fascinates me. No grade = more interesting, perhaps), “wai” translates as “water” and “kolohe” translates as “mischievous”. Put them together and you have mischievous water, which would definitely describe a flood. But it could also describe how the water flows in Hawaiʻi from the mountains through waterfalls and streams down to the ocean, just as the water appears to do here in the Waikolohe Valley, thanks to their clever design.
See more from our visit to Aulani at the Hawaiʻi 2023 page.
What’s In a Name?
All of the talk above about names got me to thinking more about names. Names are interesting, because they often have a meaning behind them. Perhaps you were named after a parent, relative or family friend that was meaningful to your parents. Often, parents try to come up with unique names for their children so that no one else will have that same name. Have you ever searched for your name to see how many other people out there have the same name?
On the other side of things, what do people think of when they think of your name? What sort of reputation are you giving to your name? Are you doing things to build up your name? Are you doing things to drag down your name? I hope I am not the kind of person where people say, “I could never name my child Steve, because it reminds me of that guy!”
Live your life in such a way that when people hear your name, they think good things!
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. - Ephesians 4:1-3
About the Photos
If I had been thinking about it at the time of taking these photos, I would have made sure to take them at the same level so that I could stitch them together as a panorama. Or I could have just pulled out my phone to take a panoramic photo, but I did not do that either. So instead, you have two photos from the same place looking in different directions. Feel free to use your imagination to make it panoramic.
As is typical for me, I increased the color saturation a bit and did a few other small adjustments to make these photos look even better than they did right out of the camera.
Photo: Each photo is a single Raw exposure, processed in Raw Therapee.
Camera: Sony Alpha A7 II
Lens: Rokinon 35mm f/1.8
Date: June 15, 2023
Location: Aulani, Ko Olina, Hawaiʻi
