50 First Dates|Makapuʻu Point Lighthouse Trail — A Paved Mile Uphill to the Same First Kiss

The trail starts behind a gate off Kalanianaʻole Highway and climbs a paved service road cut into the side of a lava headland. It is a little over a mile up, exposed the whole way, no shade worth the name. Halfway, the wind starts coming over the ridge hard enough to lean into. At the top the railing gives you the drop: Makapuʻu Point falling into blue, Mānana and Kāohikaipu islands offshore, and below the cliff edge a squat white tower with a red roof.

That is the lighthouse from the kiss montage — the sequence where Henry gets his one shot each day and Lucy meets him again for the first time, over and over, with the ocean doing all the emotional work behind them.

The tower has stood since 1909 and holds one of the largest Fresnel lenses ever installed in the United States. You cannot go inside or down to it; the light is Coast Guard property. What you get is the view from above, which is the shot the film used anyway. Between December and May the humpbacks come through and the lookout fills with people pointing at spouts.

Go early. The gate opens at seven, the lot fills by eight on a weekend, and by ten the asphalt is throwing heat back at you. Carry water; there is none up there. Coming down, turn around once near the last bend — the tower, the two islands, the whole windward coast stacked behind them. It is a view that resets every time you look at it, and you will understand why they shot the same kiss here more than once.

Photo: Makapuʻu Lighthouse from the hiking trail, Wikimedia Commons.