Glass Beach

Yesterday I headed out to work early in the morning and bummed around all morning. Went out to eat with Rick. He wasn't feeling well and I went out to a bar in Lihue with Kristin (from paddling) and her friends. The bar (which, by the way, is supposedly the best on the island) was ok, meeting the people was better. There were some characters but the guys that Kristin works with were nice and it was great to get to know new people. New friends. Too bad it was a 20 minute drive for a no-so-good bar.

This morning Rick called and woke me up and we decided to go hiking since we didn't last weekend and we're still working up for that 11-mile Na Pali hike. But Rick was still a little sub-par, so we opted for a beach hike in Port Allen, about 4 miles from where I live. It's called Glass Beach because it's an old dump and there are millions and billions of little broken pieces of glass in the sand (but really, doesn't glass come from sand?) and it's a miracle we didn't get our feet cut into bits. But the beach was really small and we saw the dried lava shore to the east and decided to explore it.

Getting down to the lava was difficult at best as we were both only wearing our slippers (flip-flops) and the cliff fell 30 to 50 feet... We found a really narrow trail down just about the same time we were giving up on the adventure. And though it was difficult to traverse the "Swiss-cheese" shoreline, it was awesome.
There were inlets and the water rushed in and out with the waves. There were small pools of water collected on the rocks (which I assume were filled with rain or high tides) where small fish and snails would live separate of the ocean in their own little microcosm. There was an area with lots of coral washed up and neat shells.
Far cooler were the blowholes and lava arches and caves that were all through the shoreline. I would be walking along the rocks and all of a sudden water would woosh up behind me. It was really neat. I walked across the lava arch above--it was really cool!

My guidebook (which is great, by the way) talked of a Keyhole Cave and, as near as we can tell, this cave was it. There were a lot of caves like it where the waves would crash in and wash back out. It was really neat to watch. After Glass Beach and the lava shore we headed to Salt Pond to cool off in the lifeguarded beach (Allyson, I didn't wear a life jacket, but are you happy I swam somewhere with a lifeguard?). It was a great morning of exploration. The rest of the day was spent running errands (I finally took that TV back and the color on my new one is awesome) and now I'm recovering from my somewhat exciting weekend. Hear that Northwood got 7 inches of snow. Not to rub it in, but it was around 84 and sunny once again today. At least it gets cool here at night for better sleeping. And by cool I mean low 70s. Tomorrow it's back to the grindstone.