Dole Park Shop in Lanai City Led Sacramento Realtor to Sweetheart Rock

Sweetheart Rock

Salaried employees who don’t like their jobs, along with spouses married to workaholics, probably cannot understand why a business owner would go on vacation and take a computer to Lanai, Hawaii. They sit on that shuttle bus and mumble under their breath, that’s not a vacation, when a) nobody asked them, b) nobody was talking to them, and c) if the internet goes kaput at Four Seasons when the poor woman in the seat behind me got up expressly at 4 AM to get a little business completed before hopping the shuttle to Four Seasons Lodge, whose concern is it, really?

I love getting up early in Lanai to respond to emails about Sacramento real estate while listening to birds and watching waves roll to shore. It’s peaceful and quiet. It gives me a slightly different perspective about business. Challenges don’t seem so severe. Even when a buyer’s agent called yesterday to say a buyer was canceling escrow because she thought the house needed too much work, that’s OK, we’ll find another buyer. She is not the right buyer for this house.

Home inspections can scare the bejesus out of most home buyers. It’s hard for buyers to decipher what is CYA in a home inspection report and what is serious. And if it is serious, exactly how serious is it? Is the home siding off its foundation? If it’s not sliding off its foundation, it’s not that serious. Every home has defects. Recently I heard about a first-time home buyer who did not want to buy a home because it had been treated for termites. It had a pest completion on file, and the buyer rejected the home.

My heart goes out to buyer’s agents who have to deal with these anxious people one-on-one. Smoothing out their fears and helping them understand a home inspection is part of the home inspector’s job, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have the buyer’s agent involved. The problem that arises is a) most buyer’s agents do not understand how a home is constructed nor how to fix things and b) there is too much legal liability, brokers don’t like their agents explaining how to hang a piece of Sheetrock.

Dole Park

The Four Seasons shuttle dropped me yesterday in Lanai City. That’s about 20 minutes from Manele Bay. Hopping off, I turned on my cellphone and eureka, there were Ingress portals all over. One of the portals lured me to its location and I discovered the Lanai City Post Office. I bought stamps for postcards I later found by wandering around some of the shops. A guy on the shuttle said you couldn’t tell the little houses were shops, but they looked very much like shops to me.

I met Mike Carroll at the Mike Carroll Gallery over by the Blue Ginger Cafe. His wife founded the Lanai Animal Rescue Center, the #1 tourist attraction in Lanai on TripAdvisor, no joke. They rescue stray and feral cats and try to find them permanent homes. I don’t have a car, so I didn’t go there but, then, I also briefly worked at the Sacramento SPCA as its marketing director when I first landed in Sacramento, so I am familiar with that kind of work.

Lunch at the Blue Ginger Cafe

Mike says it becomes art when it is framed. Before then, it is not art. His work is incredible, and he features other artists as well. I was mesmerized by the large paintings in the back that were sent to Mike by an artist in Montana. I have no wall space back in Land Park to hang work of that dimension, not to mention, I’ve never spent $20K for art; although I probably should. I don’t recall the name of this artist, but his technique is unusual — the way the light reflected while simultaneously penetrating the waves was captivating.

I spotted a sign at another shop that said: what happens in Manele Bay stays in Manele Bay, what happens in Lanai City makes it way around the square. Dole Park is a huge square comprised of several city blocks, adorned by towering Cook Island pines. There are many memorials, hence a lot of portals, park benches and a cultural center. I sat in the park and wrote postcards and yes, captured a few portals that included creating mind control fields all the way back to Manele Bay and earned my bronze badge in Ingress.

Four Seasons Lodge Koi Pond

On the way back to Four Seasons at Manele Bay, I stopped at Four Seasons Lodge up the hill. This resort features an attached golf course. The reason I could not find the View Restaurant at Manalay Bay Golf Course is because the golf course is a not located directly on the grounds. Not that I play golf, but I find golf courses alluringly beautiful. I might have to go back because I did not realize there is an orchid garden there, which I discovered by perusing things to do in Lanai on the internet.

At another shop, I talked with the owner about Lanai and she asked if I had been to Sweetheart Rock. She showed me a picture of it on a postcard. It is on the other side of a hill at Hulopo’e Beach Park. The reason I didn’t find it is because it is not a portal. I will need to rectify that and submit it to Ingress, as it would make a dandy portal. I did take a video, and I shot many photographs, one of which is on this page.

The story goes a warrior fell in love with a princess and brought her to Sweetheart Rock. She was so beautiful, he didn’t want other men to snatch her away, so he stuck her in a cave. Nice guy. One day a storm flooded out the cave while the warrior was away doing warrior things. When he returned, he found his princess had drowned. Devastated, he buried her there and then threw himself into the ocean to his death.

Sweetheart Rock is a place where you can sit for hours. Doing nothing. Just soaking it in. There was nobody there. Perfect solitude.