Kauai - Day 12

I think all of us have our land legs back...those sea legs were a little shaky, but we all seem back to normal this morning. We drove out to Glass Beach (which is close to the Port Allen harbour where we were yesterday) to search for beach glass. There are millions (probably closer to billions) of shards of sea glass that make up this beach...there really isn't any sand, just tiny crushed glass that feel like sand. The only problem we had was that by the time we got there, the tide was coming in, so we weren't able to find really big pieces, but we managed to pick up some really neat shards smoothed by the ocean. Lots of really neat colours, too. I mainly picked up green, with a few blue, some white, some amber and one tiny brilliant red piece. I don't know how I will display it all, but I'll figure it out. We want to go back again...hopefully we will have time before we leave on Monday (boo). In our exploring of the beach, we followed a road up the hill and came across an old cemetery. The oldest stone I noted was someone born in 1850! The stones were mostly too eroded to read, but there were some that you could still read names and dates on. Lots of the names were of Spanish descent, so possibly sugar cane workers or something. There were a few Japanese stones, too. A few had flowers on them, but most of them seem to be abandoned. The grasses have free reign. The ocean swells crash over lava rock and the spray goes several feet in the air. It's better than spouting horn! I hope that we can back during low tide to see if we can find some bigger pieces of sea glass. If not, I will be happy to go back and collect more small shards. On our way back, there is a property that has a HUGE ship anchor in it's yard and I have wanted to stop and get a picture of it...and Michael kindly pulled into the long driveway for me so that I could. Imagine my surprise when I got out and discovered that the ENTIRE driveway is made of sea glass. So maybe if we can't get back to the beach, we can stop in this driveway again and pick up a few handfuls. LOL. The only problem with the driveway is that it also has dirt mixed in and is someone's private property. After lunch we went to another new beach. Traci had been reading about it in one of the guidebooks, and Michael said he had been there last year, so out we went. The road to the beach is really poorly maintained (I think to discourage people from going there), but after a bumpy ride and a short hike, we walked out onto a smooth sandy beach with lots of blue ocean in front of us. We saw a couple of kite surfers. Joshua and James went boogie boarding (James lost a flipper...but luckily found it again), and the rest of dipped at least our toes in. There were lots of rocks out in the water and it was hard to find a sandy access. The tide started to come in so we got to jump a few big waves. The kids (and James) built sandcastles and then waited for the ocean to come and swallow them up. We had to leave by 6p because they lock the gates, so we headed out about 5:30. I think they don't allow people to be there after 6 because of the tide. I am sure it swallows up the whole beach. We were torn about what to do for dinner as there was a craft fair in Kapa'a that some people wanted to go to, so we ended up splitting up and 8 went to the craft fair and 8 of us stayed in town and went to Merriman's. I don't recommend it. It was ok, but not spectacular...and it was way too expensive for the quality of food we got. We should have gone to Keoki's (that's one of my favourite places to go in Kauai). Oh well. We finished off the evening with ice cream (coconut for me) from Lappert's and a few went to Uncles to get caramel apple bites (another new favourite treat we discovered on this trip). Basically it's a carmel apple that is sliced up, put in a bowl and covered with whipped cream :) Delicious!