Photo of the Day 173

Garden of Gods, Lanai Island, Hawaii, 1997

Photograph by Jim Richardson

Thousands of years of erosion left this lunar-like landscape of boulders strewn across a canyon on Hawaii's Lanai Island, known as the Garden of the Gods. According to island legend, gods tending their earthly garden dropped the rocks from the sky. Visitors to the area have constructed rock cairns, a tradition many islanders disapprove of.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Hiding Away in Lanai," January/February 1997, National Geographic Traveler magazine)