Category Archives: This and That

What it looks like may not be what it is…

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I posted this photo on instagram/facebook/twitter a few days ago. This little (1/2″) beast stung me as I was working on my computer. It had gotten into the house, landed on Lorna’s hand, she flung it off and it found me. Ouch. And then OUCH. The pain got worse, not better.

So, this bug stung me. I hit it with my shoe as it was struggling at my studio window and then I took this photo. Steve walked by and I asked him what it was. He said: ‘Bee, probably some local sort of bee.’ I called it a bee on instagram/facebook/twitter.

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Every comment said that no, that is a wasp. Or a hornet. Definitely not a bee. So I looked at photos online and told my darling husband that I doubted his assessment.

What you may not know is that Steve is a field biologist and has been for a very long time. He works with beetles, but he’s good when it comes to other creatures. He said he would take it to his office and ‘key it out’. (If you want to know what that means, let me know. I’ll ask Steve for more details. I suspect microscopes and books were involved because that is what he does.) Here’s what he found:

The solitary bee subfamily Oxaeinae includes many species that are primarily found in the new-world tropics, but with a few species in the southwestern US, including Texas. This subfamily was fairly recently included in the larger solitary bee family Andrenidae – it was formerly considered its own family, the Oxaeidae. Female Oxaeinines collect pollen and nectar, and use it to provision in brood cells in deep burrows. The solitary bees are important pollinators, especially in the southwest.

Folks, it doesn’t matter that it looks like a wasp, it’s a bee.

This brings me to the larger point of this post: The older I get, the more I realize that things are not always what they seem. Common sense is only worthwhile if it’s correct. There are so very many things that, once objective data are collected, it turns out that what looks right, just isn’t.

I view all of this as a good thing. I am reminded (yet again) that it pays to be open-minded, to listen to those who know more than I do, and to learn something new rather than to just assume that I am always right. I should add that I am wrong so often that this is not a foreign concept for me :-).

I should also add that I enjoyed the comments that were posted. It made me go back and look at the photo, and look at bee/wasp pictures online, which then made me doubt Steve. This was good for me! I tend to be too trusting which isn’t good. I wish I could always be correct, don’t you? But then I’d be insufferable, which is bad. I guess I’ll embrace being only sometimes right :-).

Oahu…

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We are staying in Waikiki. Let me just say that this is a place that is about shopping. Lots of it. If you don’t have shopping where you live, and if you like to shop, this is Nirvana. If that’s not your thing, Waikiki is sort of like hell.

I can love it, in small doses. Let me just mention that Steve and I went to the Apple store and I had a sincerely great time. My wrist is happier than I thought it could be. I know, I said I would resist. Dammit. I could not. More about that in a future post.

The four of us went to Kailua Beach today. This is one of the most beautiful beaches on the planet, depending on when you go. In our experience, it’s better in the summer than it is in the winter. I mostly took people pictures for this post but if you check my instagram or facebook feeds, you’ll find more.

The Japanese kids are so very cute! And their parents are cute too!

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This mom pulled her kids going…beckygoldsmith-Oahu-37-1

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And this woman may be the selfie queen. Later, I offered to take a photo of her with her phone but she was all about doing her own thing.beckygoldsmith-Oahu-26-1

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Let me admit that I take pictures. More than I used to. But I am not going to fall into selfie-land. Just how much documentation do we need? I know that the photos I took on this trip are largely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. They are not going to be famous, or noteworthy, or… you get the idea. They are fun! And I enjoy sharing them. But tomorrow, when we hike up Diamondhead at a very early hour, I am not carrying the big camera. And Steve says he isn’t either. Watch for instagram photos :-).

We fly home tomorrow. This has been a lovely trip, shared with good friends. I hope to get back to Hawaii in the future. If you have never been, don’t miss this place. It is truly special.

Aloha!

Kauai, last day…

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I know that a 3-week vacation is extravagant, but if you can do it you definitely should. I am almost ready to be heading home which is good. We leave Kauai tomorrow and have not quite 2 days on Oahu and then, BAM, it’s back in Sherman.

We went to Po’ipu today. More sitting on the beach except that I did take my laptop and work on supply lists until the battery ran out. Thankfully it only took 1 1/2 hours. Then I looked up and saw this:

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We sat in the shade at the far end of the beach by the ‘kiddie pool’. This is a great place to sit! Everyone snorkeled but me but, gotta say, I’m just not that much into fish so i was good with that. I did swim a bit but the surf was way up. I took photos of waves that were completely average so I deleted them. The world can live without more photos of waves.

We saw green sea turtles early on, near us…

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And there was a Hawaiian monk seal on this almost-island…

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If this is not the laziest mammal on the planet I’m not sure what is. She hardly moved for hours on end. She was on the sand on what turned almost into an island at high tide. In the photo below you can see the beach on the right and a line of people walking deeper into the water. They are walking on a spit of sand that at low tide is above water and, here, is rapidly disappearing under water. I think when I took this photo the seal had swum off of the small island you cannot see for the water on the left.

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We also went to spouting horn…

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Water rushes in and the up through this hole. The bigger the wave…

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The bigger the splash.

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I also saw chickens. If you have been to Kauai, you’ve seen chickens. They roam the island freely, and they are really cute until the roosters wake you up well before dawn.

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But let me say that I prefer chickens and roosters to mosquitoes. I wish we could trade.

Tomorrow we fly to Oahu. We are staying in Waikiki. We have one full day and then we fly home. I’ll post to instagram but may not find time to post. Once I’m home it’ll be a day or so before I post again. So, if you don’t hear from me until next week, aloha! Mahalo (thank you) for sharing this trip with me!

So what exactly is a ‘moderate’ hike?

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We hiked the Alakai Swamp Trail today. 4 miles in, 4 out. This is a hike that remember being hard. Steve, however, had different memories. Last night, Keith looked online and found that many people had called this a hike of moderate difficulty. I think that it helps a lot to know who is doing this labeling. A mountain climber would call this hike piffle. My mother would call it impossible. We made it, but there was plenty of effort involved.

There are terrific views on this hike if the weather cooperates. It did for us. We saw into the first overlook:

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We took photos and no one fell over the (incredibly steep) dangerous edge.

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Let me add that at this spot I visited with Jim, a man with a very big camera who was photographing an owl that I only saw the end of. This is what I do. I visit with strangers and as a result we have met some interesting folks. Jim, apart from knowing the birds, was also watching an enforcement helicopter that we would have missed. It was going after back country hikers/campers/pot growers. We’ll never know but it was interesting to watch the helicopter land on a tiny ridge of land way below us.

Yesterday we met John Lydgate, the grandson of the Lydgate who started Lydgate Park. He looked interesting so I said hello. Darned if everyone isn’t interesting in one way or another. Anyway, back to today.

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This is a benign stretch of the trail but it lets you know there is rockiness and mud when it’s wet. Luckily we did not encounter mud. Been there, done that, happy to have missed it today. There are stairs, lots of them, going and coming. I was so happy to have on my knee braces and to have started the day with ibuprofen. But, after 4 interesting miles during which I ignored my camera, we got to the end.

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Off in the distance is Hanalei Bay. You have to drive all the way around the island to get to there from where we were today. It’s a rare treat to get to this spot and not have the view blocked by clouds, which explains Steve’s happiness. (Hunt and Karen Tooley, who missed it on our last trip—we wish you had been there with us!)

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Other people came and took a photo of us all. Yay!

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And then we walked back, 4 miles. The stairs were more up than down. I was not loving it but what can you do but just keep going.

I lost my (prescription) sunglasses along the way. Darn. But we made it out and could still move by the time we got to the car. Yay, again! Lunch was late because… well, let me just say that some of us thought the hike was more moderate than it really is.

We stopped to look into Waimea Canyon on the drive back to Lihue. I’ve seen it before so didn’t spend much time looking. Goodness—am I jaded? No, I think I was just tired and hot. I at least took a picture of my 3 companions.

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Believe it or not we stopped for groceries (and non-prescription sunglasses) and got back to the condo where Steve is now cooking dinner. I do so love that man. When I finish this post we get to eat dinner, which is one of the 3 best meals of the day :-). Bye!

From Princeville to Lihue…

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Last night we walked to an overlook. It was pretty!

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I took pictures of what we saw on my phone and instagrammed them. With my big camera I took pictures of Amanda and Steve. The other didn’t really turn out.

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Today we drove to Lihue and stopped at the Kiluea Lighthouse—it was closed! FYI: don’t go on Monday.

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We could still see the lighthouse, and maybe it’s better from this angle. The guys looked at birds… the red-footed booby if I remember correctly. There were a lot of them.

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I noticed this little flower. It has a very nice design, one that would be good for applique.

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We stopped at the Na Aina Kai botanic garden which was also closed, except for the gift shop. But I did get to visit this stand of trees. I was taken on a tour of this garden before and I loved these same trees then.

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We stopped at Larry’s Music in Kapa’a where Amanda had a quick ukulele lesson from Sam. I took pictures.

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And it’s possible that I have my photo lesson for the week. The assignment is ‘silhouette’. I love them both for their simple yet expressive lines.

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Tomorrow we are hiking the Alakai Swamp trail. Should be fun!

 

Maui, last day(s)…

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On our last full day on Maui, we went birding. The guys are enthusiastic birders as is to be expected because they are biologists after all.

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Even though I am not even close to being a birder, I did take a very few nice bird pictures.

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Personally, I enjoyed the shape of this tree as much as I enjoyed the birds.

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We went to Makena Beach Park after birding where there were dangerous shore breaks. Enough so that we did not stay in the water long. Amanda is saying hello there, not asking for rescue :-).

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I was happy to catch some wave action in focus—manually!

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I took a few more “story” pictures. Please do tell me what you think. I have to turn in my homework tomorrow.

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PS—While walking down an alley to our hotel one night we saw this mailbox…

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I stopped, and stood in front, and contemplated the message and button…

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The ‘Oh try it, it won’t shock you’ pulled me in. Seriously, I’ll fall for just about anything, just ask my sons.

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I got a little wet. Luckily the camera was spared a drenching. Next time I see something like this, I’ll stand to the side when I press the button :-).