In Quest of Banana Bread

 

The only read stop we made along the Road to Hana was not at a waterfall but in the little oceanside hamlet of Ke'Anae which is on a small peninsula of the same name, about two thirds of way along the journey.

Jessica had wanted to find a particular little store that sells banana bread, which she remembered with her previous trip with her girlfriend in medical school, called Aunt Sandy's. Being an "auntie" is a familiar term in Hawaiian culture. 

The turn off to Ke'Anae town was a dirt road off the paved highway leading down to a flat grassier area long the water, and a small gravel parking lot. Here one found a small shack and outdoor covered picnic table. Already there were several folks in line to order from the window. After we made our order and sat the covered picnic table to await the break and coffee, a tour bus arrived and disgorged a small group of ten people got got in the line as well. It was evidently a well-known place that many had discovered. We saved the bread for later and drank the coffee.

Afterwards, Jessica wanted to explore the "town", which just a single street with several houses and old stone church. The town was once bigger but was mostly destroyed in a tsunami in the 19th century, leaving only the church. At the end of the street, at the water on the other side of the peninsula, we entered the gravel parking lot of what appeared to access to the ocean.

It was not so much a beach at all. Instead it was a place where the waves came into crash on black volcanic rocks. One could wade ou the rocks ten or twenty feet to where the water crashed onto them. We weren't interested in that. Instead I said I wanted to take a break here for a few minutes, to enjoy the crashing of the waves on the rocks. We got our beach chairs out of the Jeep we rented, the ones we had used at Makena Beach almost a week ago by that time, and we set them up not on sand but on the edge of the land where the rocks began. There we had the shading of couple trees to keep us out of direct.

As other folks came and went on the parking lot, with some wading down onto the rocks in front of us, we sat in our chairs and enjoyed the warm breexe, and the sound of the waves crashing. It was one of my favorite moments of teh whole trip. I could have sat there for hours.