Waimea Audubon Center and Waimea Bay

After riding, Matt and I went to the Waimea Audubon Center and walked around. The center is pretty big, with a main paved path, an upper path that was closed during our visit, and an amazing number of smaller off-shoots and random paths. Its possible to walk them all, but not if you aren’t paying very close attention to where you are and where you’ve been.


The center has plants from all over the south Pacific, and most of them have labels on or near them. Unfortunately, they aren’t all labeled, and some of the labels were very hard to read. I’d hoped they would have a printed guide to all of their plants, but they don’t. When I mentioned that to one of the women working the information desk, she seemed surprised, but said it was a good idea. I can’t believe no one else has ever suggested that...


At the rear of the center is a waterfall, and the pond is usually open for swimming. I didn’t go swimming, although the idea of dunking Matt had popped into my head (he’d given me grief about taking my video camera to the center, because, after all, plants don’t do anything fun).


I saw several interesting plants there, such as this cannonball tree.


I also saw one of the endangered Hawaiian moorhen. This one posed a bit for us, and even danced around some when I turned on the video camera. I’m pretty sure it was just scratching an itch, but that was more interesting than watching it just stand there.


After spending a couple of hours at the center – which really wasn’t enough time to do the place justice, we went across the street to Waimea Bay. Another beautiful beach, although I didn’t get to do any swimming there. Matt was waiting in the park lot with the car idling, because actual parking is darn near impossible unless you’re willing to park on the side of the road. And he wasn’t.