Day 7

This morning started with black coffee as there was a lack of condiments, but hey, at least it was kona coffee. With all the Long Beach prep and the day of travel out of the way, it was basically the first day of the field portion of our program. So, we started a little later, had breakfast and got a lecture by Dr. Terry Hunt. He was the one that worked with Dr. Carl Lipo on the Nat Geo special about Moai on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). It was cool getting to talk to Dr. Hunt and Dr. Lipo in such a small group, kinda like the academic version of seeing that band at a that small venue. Anyway, after that we quickly packed up a lunch and headed to our research area at Kuoloa Ranch. We got onto a really old school bus with no windows and started driving a dirt road into Ka’a’awa Valley. Then the driver stops and starts telling us about some history. He starts by explaining that his great, great, great grandfather first came to Hawaii in the 1800s with missionaries and became close to the King Kamehameha III, serving various roles such as minister of the interior. At that moment, I realized, WE’RE GETTING A TOUR BY THE OWNER! This is awesome, this guy’s family owns this huge chunk of Oahu and has for a really long time. He drove us through the majestic and amazingly picturesque valley where numerous films have been shot and instead of giving us the normal tour he pointed out features of the landscape that would be of interest to us. We got to stop and get out and look at archaeological sites up close and explore the valley floor. Please enjoy the gallery below:

While we were on the valley floor we found this cool plant, watch what it does:

After our excursion to the valley, we made our way back to the barn and started working on our data dictionaries. But, I’m in the UAV group which means my job for the common product is to produce a system for organizing the imagery data retrieved from the different UAV flights. Wait, my job is to organize images? Haha, ok, no problem, happens to one of my hobbies. So, I’m going to use Picasa to like I do at home so that I have the ability to tag photos so that we can look them up by a variety of keywords. I’m looking forward to putting Picasa to work in a setting aside from family pictures.