Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

[memorylane]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

[memorylane]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

[memorylane]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch



From seeing that one lone coconut tree next to what I would assume is a banyan tree, I am pretty sure I was in the right place. I didn't see an railroad crossing type sign but there are some things that are really overgrown. It is basically nothing but a bare expanse of land, some cleaned out and pruned, parts not. If you recall the houses across the street then you would know I was in the right place (if I was).

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

OMG! My heart gave a leap!

The coconut tree has grown somewhat, but I recognize the ironwood trees...who the heck cleared the pasture and planted the little palms, I'd like to know?

The houses across the street are looking really nice and landscaped, but they're the ones. The one behind the hibiscus hedge used to have a koi pond.

I cannot tell you what good this has done for my soul. Just Thank You...really. It's bedtime over here on this side of the world, and I know exactly what my bedtime thoughts are going to be, tonight. Such memories!

Now....when are you coming to France to visit me, so that I can show you around over here?

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

This house belonged to Admiral somebody or other from Pearl Harbor. There was a red-haired boy about my age who used to come during school vacations and long weekends...his favorite of our horses was the big bay gelding called 'Hurcules'...I may still have a picture of him riding that horse. At one time, a single dad with a young daughter stayed there and re-did the interior, All I really remember is the shower wall, all curved and early seventies modern, done in teensy little ceramic tiles. We thought it was 'Keen'. Or 'Groovy'.

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

Suzie, this first one was a test shot to see if I could get them to show up directly here. It did so here are the rest. Anything you recognize???

Does Camp Mokuleia own that side of the pasture or is that sign attached to the back of what looks a pickup truck?

The entrance used to be just behind this picture. There was a gate a bit further in...a real pain to have to get out and open the gate then get back out to shut the gate when passing through. But an escaped horse is no joke, especially with those giant gravel trucks from the quarry passing through at high speed. I remember once pulling Nonda the horse by her mane and dragging her back into the pasture as the yellow school bus waited for me.

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

The flat and grassy space behind what looks to be a truck/sign is what use to be our arena. Full of jumps to go over with the horses and lots of nice soft sand to land on in case you fell off. My one strong memory of the arena is helping my dad build a new fence at the front by the road. Two posts, string between for marking the height, then digging more posts with the posthole digger (send slips out easily so we'd have to get down on our knees and scoop the dirt and sand out with an empty coffee can).

This brings back so many memories of the horses that we had at that time. We had some that were ours and some that were boarded with us. Dr. Miller had a calico colored mare called Camille, Mr. Texiera had a swaybacked buckskin called Champ and a crazy old little mare called Venus.

Venus once stole a newborn foal from Fern White's mare during the night and took it for her own baby. My mom came out the next morning to find Venus happy and Fern's mare going crazy. That foal had somehow gotten out through the gate of the corral behind the ironwoods and had wandered all the way to the arena, where Venus happened to be, leaving the real mother stuck in the corral and screaming her head off and running back and forth. At first, my mom thought that Venus had had a foal...that horse would proposition any male hose around, castrated or not, and we kids had once let her loose with a young gray stallion from Crowbar Ranch that had stayed with us for a few weeks...but then she noticed Fern's horse and saw she had an udder full of milk, so she reunited the two. Poor Venus screamed and looked sadly over the corral fence for days before she decided to just go ahead and adopt one of my goats, instead (she followed that goat around for months, but the goat didn't care).

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

My mom use to take care of Clark Reynold's polo ponies. They stayed at our place and we'd excercise them every day after school...it was wild and really, I'm not at all sure that I'd let my own eight and ten year old kids do what we did...five horses, saddled up and in full polo gear including bridles and leg protection and halters with leadropes and with braided tails (my mom does a french braid on a horses tails that is so fine and so beautiful!), then a kid would get on one and grab the leadropes of the four others (two on each side), and head off to the beach for a few miles of gallop in the sand. And every Sunday we'd go in the same group of horses to the Polo Field to be there to exchange horses at full gallop during a game and to hotwalk the sweaty foamy flared nostriled and wild eyed horses after a chukka.

The beach, for those of you that haven't been to Mokuleia, is just on the other side of the road, directly behind the houses in the pictures. Directly behind. With just a small reef to protect what is a nice little bay-like curve that goes from Camp Mokuleia to the Beach Colony bungalows right next to the Polo Field. And I'm not even sure how much beach is actually left there...even in the late sixties homeowners were building cinderblock walls to protect their places from erosion and eventual destruction by being eaten by the waves. During the great storm of '69 there was sand all the way onto the road on front of where those baby palms are, today.

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

oops.......

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

.....oops! hang on, I'll try again....

[memorylane]

Re: Seeking the person who recommended Kualoa Ranch

The camp sign was in the ground. Never was in use. I used the one directly across from the airstrip but those koa nut seed things sucked to lay on so camping out wasnt much fun other than the wonderful surf sounds all night.
Glad I got the areas you wanted to see.
You called it your old homestead...how did you end up there and why did you leave?
I was living there from 79-82 and it just spoiled me, the awesome weather and such so I am nuts for tropical most anything now.