Tag Archives: Spencer Beach Park

There goes my morning walk

Flash floods create a new pathway to the ocean at Pelekane Beach in Kawaihae, Hawaii

When I have time on my way to work, I like to stop in Kawaihae and go for an early morning walk. A favorite is to drive to Pelekane Beach and walk to Spencer Beach Park. Those days are gone! The flash floods from a few weeks back took care of that.

For starters, the road is still closed. I can see piles of dirt and debris through the locked access gates. But even if I could access the road, half of Pelekane Beach is gone too. The floods whooshed through the lagoon behind the beach and took a huge amount of sand with it. So now there’s no lagoon, half a beach, and a lot of trees in the bay.

It may be that the powers that be will bring in some sand to restore the former beach. That’s what’s happened at nearby Hapuna Beach, which also lost a section of its sand. In the meantime I will have to explore some new options.

The eyes have it

The small Indian mongoose is the poster child for bad ideas in Hawaii. Introduced back in the days of the sugar plantations, the idea was for them to get rid of the rats running rampant in the cane fields. Alas, rats are nocturnal, mongooses diurnal, so their paths only crossed on the shift change. Instead, the mongooses appreciated the absence of predators in Hawaii and the abundance of ground-nesting birds and were major reasons for the extinction of many native bird species.

They are most frequently seen running across roads, like big sausages with little legs. Closer up, there’s an intensity about them, as seen in this photo. I’ve had a couple of close encounters and have no wish to get into an altercation with one. I’d probably win, but would likely bear the scars of victory!

Autograph collectors

Bees on an Autograph Tree flower in Hawaii

I was at Spencer Beach Park when I heard bees. Looking up, I saw them all over an open flower on one of the trees. I’ve never seen so many bees on the same flower at the same time. As they left, others would be moving forward to join the party.

The tree was an Autograph Tree (Clusia rosea), which is native to the Caribbean and is something of an invasive species here. It gets its name from its thick leaves with a thin green covering. Kids scratch their names into the leaves and watch as they grow with the leaves!

Posted for Becky’s Squares: Move Forward, Reconstruct, Renew, and/or are Burgeoning. See more responses here.

They walk the line

Workers examine an area burned by fire near Spencer Beach Park, Hawaii

Recently, I went down to Spencer Beach Park for a morning walk. The area south of the park was torched by a wildfire back in August of 2023, which I wrote about here. Since then the power lines have been restored and a good deal of clearing has been going on.

In that previous post, many burned trees are visible, but these have now been removed, as has most everything else. It looks like the area is getting a new start, but what that start is, I don’t know.

On this day, what captured my attention was this group of workers on the project. I first saw them heading south along the coast, then picked them up again on their return journey. Much of that time, they moved forward steadily, and evenly spaced. It was a Monday, so maybe they were walking through the areas they’d be working on, and discussing what they’d be doing.

Posted for Becky’s Squares: Move Forward, Reconstruct, Renew, and/or are Burgeoning. See more responses here.

An area burned by fire near Spencer Beach Park, Hawaii

Slippahs

These slippahs, or slippers, were at Spencer Beach Park and had been left on the beach by people out in canoes. But it is customary in Hawaii to remove your footwear when entering someone’s home. This is an import from Asian traditions. Here, most people go barefoot but some, including us, switch to house slippahs, which are only used indoors. I like this because I have no wish to step on a centipede with a bare foot!

Armas

A lot of people here are involved with outrigger canoe paddling. There’s been a big resurgence in the activity, along with other aspects of traditional Hawaiian life. Several of these canoes are stored at Spencer Beach Park, which is where I saw these armas, floating in the air, like birds on the wing.