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Aloha from Kauai!

Aloha from Kauai!

My family regularly escapes to Hawaii as much as possible. However, I promise to keep this blog post more about glass and less about my family vacation! We have a time share condo on the Island of Kauai…my husband and I have been coming here for, well, decades. I’m happy to say, that not much has changed in the past twenty years! Even after Hurricane Iniki, the trashed Coco Palms Hotel remains, a shattered and battered reminder of what that island went through in 1992. But…back to the GLASS..the glass! Back then, I’d get up every morning, slip outside quietly and hit the beach. I was mesmerized by all that sea glass! I LOVED it! Forget the shells. I was hooked on glass back then! I’d wander down to the beach, bag in hand, head down, and my eyes were on the hunt! I wanted it ALL! And, there was plenty! A lot of brown and white, a little green, a few specks of blue, and maybe one of pink or red. Every morning I’d bring back my stash to our kitchen, clean the glass, sort it by color, and put it in pretty glass jars. I stuffed the jars in my luggage and brought them home. Back then, home was Oahu, 40 minutes away! On one trip, a waiter at Brenneke’s told us about a place called “Glass Beach!” Can you stand it! GLASS BEACH! (you gotta remember..this is pre google days) He said to head to Port Allen, look for the big gas tanks down by the shore, then head towards the water down a dirt road..and then, we’d see it. My poor husband. We went, I LOVED it!!! He waited in the car while I went to check it out! HEAVEN! Tons of glass EVERYWHERE..all colors, all glistening in the sun! I took some pretty ones and left the rest! There was a refinery nearby that dumped its glass in the ocean and mother nature took care of the rest!

Before ya’all get wicked excited and start booking flights to Kauai..I’m gonna fast forward twenty years. Hmmmm….not so much glass anymore :( I didn’t see ANY glass on the beaches in Kapaa (where our condo is) And Glass Beach was looking slim. When I googled it, many posts said to leave the glass on the beach! A combination of no replenishment, erosion, and people like me taking it from the beach, has left little glass!This site explains it pretty well. We went to Glass Beach on this trip to check it out. It was THE LAST thing my family wanted to do. (see attached pictures taken may 2015) All week, I mentioned to my kids…”….there’s this fun, cool, beach on the south shore with glass all over it!!!” in a fun wowow voice!!! I got silence from them! Then, on our LAST DAY on the island, we had checked out of our condo, and had two hours to kill before going to the airport. Once again, I said…”Hey! There’s this cool, neat, hidden, secret, beach, on the south shore……” My husband drove out there, he and my son stayed in the car, while my daughter and I went down to the beach. It’s still beautiful! There’s still glass, but it’s so small, it blends in with the sand, which really, is glass!!! There’s a lot of black sand too. And, there’s a beautiful, very old, cemetery over looking the beach. Gorgeous!

The kicker, is that I’ve saved all that beach glass from twenty years ago from Kauai and it rests in a huge beautiful glass jar AT THE SHARD SHOP! People dig through it from time to time, and now, they know the history of it!
Peace, Love, Glass

 

 

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