A Radiant Wednesday Walk Swimming with Dolphins! Kehena Beach, Lower Puna, Far East Big Island, Hawai'i - June 7, 2022

Warm greetings all! 🙏 💚

Note: I accidentally forgot to post this in the #WednesdayWalk group. Doh! I feel really silly.

Today's #WednesdayWalk was truly amazing, not only for the radiance of the sun on the ocean this morning, and that the ocean was calmer than it's been in several days, but coolest of all, I had the opportunity to swim with dolphins close up for the first time in my life!

One small bit of disclosure first, however. While I do often walk to Kehena, our beloved clothing-optional, black-sand beach, my partner, @kai-sunrise, and I actually drove here this morning. We did walk, hike actually, down the steep, rocky trail, to get to the beach, though. Kehena has an trail down to it on each side of the beach, and up to this point, I've only shared photos of the other entrance, because that is the closer one when I'm walking to the beach. So see, it's good that we drove part of the way!

Pretty much as soon as we got to the beach, Kaï grabbed her goggles, snorkel, and flippers, and went to swim with the numerous dolphins. She was out there swimming quite close to them for about 45 minutes. I stayed on the shore that first time she went out, in part because she goes out a lot farther than I'm comfortable going yet.

This is the view from the top, before heading down the trail to the beach.

And continuing down the trail. The glistening of the sun on the ocean was breathtaking, which is why I wanted to share these shots with y'all.

It was so gloriously beautiful at Kehena today!

There were several large pods of dolphins hunting fish and playing the whole time we were there. They would often jump, spinning out of the water! These shots, while not amazing, are the best ones that I got of them, aside from the great video that @kai-sunrise took (that I unfortunately was not able to post using 3Speak - My apologies). They're still pretty cool, though!

The dolphins kept coming close to the shore, and on my second try, and with Kaï's coaxing, I swam out a little farther with goggles, and to my utter amazement, watched a whole pod od dolphins glide, effortlessly and slowly, right below me, fewer than maybe fifteen feet away. I put my head up to breath three times, and when I put my head back under water, they were still there! I saw several adults and even a few baby dolphins! It was such a great honor to be able get such a close-up view of them! I tried to post this first using the 3Speak front-end so that I could share a 32-second video that Kaï took of a couple dolphins spiraling out of the water, but sadly I was not successful in that endeavor, so no vídeo today. 😞

I hope that y'all enjoyed this really special #WednesdayWalk!

Thank you all so much for allowing me to share more of the beauty and magic from my life and my world with you, and for your continuous appreciation and support! I am deeply grateful! 🙏 💚

Image created by @doze.