2015-01-30 Naha Devastation

It's been a long dry spell without a boat trip.
I was starting to feel withdrawal symptoms.
I actually went out in late November to Marguerite Bay but my camera wasn't working and so I had no usable pictures, so I did not update my 2014 blog for that trip.
Thanks to my friend Len for diagnosing the problem with the camera, over the phone no less.

I started out 2015 with a trip to the Naha, of course.
There was an article on the Sitnews website a month or so ago relating that a big windstorm had blown some trees down and damaged the ramp.  The article said that it was damaged so badly that they had to pull it out.  And furthermore they had no funding and no time to repair or replace it.

I was prepared for no ramp.
After all how hard can it be to take the raft the few yards to shore from the float?
But I was not at all prepared for the devastation that I saw in the area.

It sure looked strange to see the float not connected to shore.

Of course I wasn't there when the big one hit but I suspect it was the one that took out the ramp and also crunched the bull rail on the dock.

Just to the left of where the ramp used to go up to shore there is a small tree covered knoll.  It's still covered in trees, but they were all blown down.  Looks like a bomb went off.

I got my hiking gear together, put the raft in the water and paddled the short distance to shore with the intention of getting as far up the trail as I could before blow downs or lack of daylight stopped me.

The trail was a challenge.  See the above two pictures.  In many cases the boardwalk and/or the stairs, or a small bridge, were completely wiped out.  Sometimes I could work my way around them easily, and other times, not so much.

Check out this one that went down.  It was a fairly young and healthy tree, not an old rotten one.  I can imagine the sounds of that storm.  It must have been ear splitting.

I went up the trail for a couple of hours but had to deal with many blow downs and take numerous detours.

The only "critters" I saw on this hike were the squirrels.  You can hear them chattering through the trees frequently.  I'd see them occasionally but they usually don't sit still long enough for a good shot.

They were busy pulling down pine cones into piles, and then chewing the seeds out of them leaving empty husks.

Here's what's left after the squirrels get through with them.  All the good stuff is gone, nothing left but husk.

There's one of the little guys working hard on a pine cone.

Even with the damage it's still a beautiful place to visit.