Oh Kauai, how I love you!

*This may seem like the longest post in the history of blogging but I did cut back A LOT and summarized as best I could. But come on, how could you get too much of Kauai?!*

The first night we got to Kauai we were pretty tired since our bodies thought it was 4 hours later than it was! Luckily we had an AMAZING view from our lanai and we were able to just relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery! We walked across the street and watched the sunset and fell Truly, Madly, and Deeply in L.O.V.E. with Hawaii, and the trip had only just begun!

One of the things we loved about Kauai was the wild chickens... EVERYWHERE!!! Why did this chicken cross the road? Because there was a crosswalk! That was reason enough! They seriously were everywhere. I went running 3 mornings while we were there and I kid you not when I say that I almost stepped on a chicken on every run. They would run right out in front of me! And they woke us up every morning, and continued "cock-a-doodle-doo-ing" all day long (another thing I learned about roosters while we were there is that they don't just do that at sunrise. They do it long BEFORE sunrise and continue to do it any time they please throughout the day!)

Sunday morning we got up and dressed and drove to church. We left plenty early since we didn't know our way around yet and didn't want to be late. So when we got to the church with 30 minutes to spare we decided to just drive around a bit. After only a few minutes we saw this amazing canyon with a bright yellow field off to one side and stopped to take a picture of it. It was nothing special and wasn't marked, it wasn't part of Waimea Canyon or anything else it was just a pretty spot and the island was FULL of them! It was seriously the most beautiful place I've ever been! Church was wonderful and they had about 20 knitted leis premade in every color combination possible and then as the visitors would walk into Relief Society they would put a lei that matched our clothes around our necks. SUCH a neat thing!

The pictures above and below are both along the road down to our resort. Above is the side of a TUNNEL of ivy and vines that grew over all of the trees and bushes along each side of the road and then connected in several places overhead. SO beautiful! Below is just an amazing little meadow off to the side of the road. Again, nothing special, just typical Kauai... BREATHTAKING!

Here we are in the car after church, still just driving around the island. I'm wearing my homemade lei that I got at church. Peter got a new iPhone and it has a flash and 2 cameras, one on the front side and one on the back so we had fun taking pictures of ourselves that we could preview as we took it!

We decided to drive a little ways up Waimea Canyon to watch the sunset and it was so amazingly beautiful! I think the Sunsets and the sunrises (since our bodies hadn't adjusted and still thought it was 9am at 5am we got to watch the sunrise almost every day) are one of my all time favorite things. When you hear about closing your eyes and going to your "happy place" and life seems a little more bearable, I used to doubt that it really worked to relieve stress. But now that I have found a "happy place" that absolutely DEFINES relaxation and calmness and serenity and just pure BLISS I can see how going to your happy place could save you in times of stress and chaos and I assure you I will be visiting mine often!

This is one of my happy places. This spot along the road to Waimea Canyon. There was a breeze blowing and it was the perfect temperature outside and the colors were SO vivid since there had just been a slight mist of rain and the sun was just about to set. We had a pretty good view in all directions and Peter and I pulled off to the side of the road and just breathed it in. *sigh* Yes, I'll be visiting often!

This is a small sliver of Waimea Canyon. Isn't it so beautiful? I love the way it's so green along the bottom where the water is!

*Sigh* The second sunset of the trip. Absolutely stunning.

The next morning Peter came running with me. He's been wanting to do that for months but we've never been able to so it was fun to go together. He CLAIMS that my slowish steady jog (about 9:20/mile) was harder for him to maintain than if we were going faster so he was winded after 2.5 miles and we headed to the resorts gym and I finished up my run on the treadmill and he lifted weights for a bit. Then we drove into Lihue and picked up our friends, Shaun and Mindy from the airport. We made a trip to Costco and WalMart to stock up on food and essentials for the week and then headed down to Poipu Beach. SUCH a great beach!

We went to Poipu Beach several times during our stay and these gorgeous sea turtles were there every day to greet us! They were RIGHT next to the shore and you could snorkel right next to them. Which we did, and I admit to screaming in my snorkel as I turned around several times to find myself practically kissing them on every side as the current kept pushing them into me! You can't tell from the picture but they were really big! There was one that was probably about 3 1/2 or 4 feet across and several others about 3 feet across and a little baby one about 1 1/2 feet across. SO COOL! LOVE the turtles in Kauai!

This cute little fella was a monk seal and he was just chillin across the street from our resort. The locals would rope them off as soon as one would come on shore so no one could get too close and disturb them but how amazing is that?! We saw several of these guys too. One of them was at Poipu Beach and we just sat and watched him forever and occasionally he'd flop a little further up the shore as the waves would start to splash him.

Bird of Paradise flower outside of the restaurant we ate dinner at.

another amazing flower outside the restaurant.

The sunset on our beach that night. *sigh* yes the sunsets were my favorite.

The next morning we decided to check out a waterfall that Peter and I had heard about from some of the locals at church on Sunday. They'd told us about it and as we talked to Mindy and Shaun about it found out that it was one that they'd been to on their zipline tour the last time they'd come to Kauai. It's called Kipu Falls and it was AMAZING! First of all the trail to get there was SO COOL! It was only about a 5 minute walk from the road and it was a tiny sliver of a dirt path in the middle of super tall sugar cane! You couldn't even hear the water until you came out of the sugar cane and then it was RIGHT there in front of you!

Here is Shaun all set up to watch at a safe distance as Peter and Mindy decide to be the brave ones to do the first cliff jumping over the waterfall into the deep pool below!

Peter, of course, did a back flip off the rock... on his very first jump! That guy is crazy I've decided! But I kind of like him for it! It keeps things interesting! Lol! To give him a little credit there were a lot of other people there and he watched several of them jump first and was pretty confident in the safety of his jump.

Shaun taking the plunge

Peter, Mindy & Shaun

Peter doing a back flip off of the rope swing

Mindy on the rope swing

Peter doing another back flip off of the rock

Peter saw a young kid (who he assumed was an experienced local) climb up the tree above where the rope was tied and jump off from there. So he decided to do it too... but of course, not just jump, he had to do a back flip! You have to look closely to see him so I circled him in red on the first picture and then he's just a little lower in each one after that.

Here he is doing a dive from above the waterfall

Well right as we were packing up to leave the same kid that had jumped off the tree earlier climbed even HIGHER up the tree and jumped again. We joked that Peter needed to do it just so he wasn't "one upped" by a teenager! Well after a VERY short deliberation, off he went. And of course it was another back flip! You can hardly see him in the second picture since it's just his head and shoulders upside down coming out from behind some leaves! What a daredevil!! He over-rotated this landing a tiny bit too much and ended up still landing feet first but then he hit his bum next and his tailbone started hurting a bit after that. Well we went back to our room and checked out the damage and he was already black and blue over his whole backside and down part of his thighs!! Over the next week it turned all sorts of shades of purple and black and got spotted and crazy and then after just over a week it disappeared altogether overnight! It was kind of crazy. Peter was in quite a bit of pain and his words were, "I seriously didn't think there was any chance that I could get hurt, I mean, it's just water." Oh my! At least he's earned a new level of respect for stunts like that! At least he'll think about it a little more before he does something crazy next time! It really wasn't that bad but when we got home he was riding go-carts out at my sisters house with my brother in law and he went over a bump going pretty fast. I guess the way he was sitting on those tiny things with his knees all the way up to his chest all of his weight was on his already tender tailbone and then the bump just did him in. And to top it off we drove 12 hours in the car the very next day! Lovely!

*and as a side note, I also jumped off the waterfall and did the rope swing but since I was in the water there were no pictures of it! We do have video thanks to Shaun but I haven't gone through all of them yet and formatted them for the web and everything so there you go!*

After our super fun Kipu Falls adventures we headed into Poipu for Peter's and my first taste of Kauai's famous Puka Dogs!! OH MY GOODNESS!!! So it's a hogi roll that they poke a hole in the middle of (but not all the way through so it holds the yummy sauces inside) and then you put a polish (or beef) dog inside along with their creamy garlic goodness sauce and then your choice of "salsa". It wasn't really salsa it was more like a glaze but it was YUMMY! I think I got mango papaya salsa on mine. HEAVEN! Pure fattening heaven!!

That afternoon we decided to drive all the way up Waimea Canyon to the very last lookout as far as you can go and it was SO amazing! The roads on the last stretch were less than desireable with their canyon sized potholes! But the view at the end was incredible!

The road ended in a parking lot and you walk up a ramp to a viewing platform that looks out over this amazing drop off into a valley along the coastline. Breathtaking! The mountains in Kauai look fuzzy! That's the only way I can think to describe it! They look like they are covered in moss even though it's not the right proportions! It's just lush and green and soft looking! So beautiful!

This spot where Peter and I are standing is right by one of the wettest spots on the planet. It's called Wai'ale'ale and it's beautiful!

and so were the clouds

and so were these cute love birds

and of course, the amazing sunset. Yes I do believe I have a picture of the sunset from every day that we were there.*sigh* Again, I'm in my happy place!

The next morning Peter and I decided to do a Helicopter Tour of the island. We'd heard so many amazing things about it and heard that if you are going to spend money on ANYTHING while you are in Kauai it should be a helicopter tour. So we bit the bullet and went. We made sure we got one that didn't take a gazillion people and we got one with big windows so we'd be able to see and it was the best price on any we'd researched before we came or that we'd seen since we got there. However. Of the four people sitting in the back of the helicopter one was an enormous man who took up more than his fair share of the space! Peter had the pleasure of being in full contact with this man from shoulder to knee for the next hour. I had the pleasure of sitting with only one cheek on the seat and one cheek hanging out over the floor to ceiling window and trying to convince myself that there was no way that I was going to fall through the window that was just below my right cheek the whole time! Yikes!! With our lovely large friend in tow it was difficult to unwedge my arms enough to snap pictures as well! But as you will see I did manage to take some pretty amazing ones. Another bummer was that it was raining when we went on our tour. They told us that it was raining a little bit and asked if we cared if the helicopter got a little wet on our tour. And we didn't. It rained a little every day on Kauai so it didn't seem like a big deal. What they DIDN'T tell us (and they DID know before we left) was that there was a massive black rain cloud covering the entire north shore of the island meaning that half of the tour was impossible to get to! So we saw part of our tour twice instead. Lovely! And the add said that we got a free Jurassic Park Waterfall Poster for free for booking with them and we never saw it or heard mention of it and we were so relieved to be unglued from our large flying companion that we didn't think to ask for it! I was kind of kidding about being bummed about not getting the poster but kind of not since we didn't really see any waterfalls on the tour, let along the Jurassic Park one. Oh well, you can't win 'em all! But here are some amazing pictures we DID manage to win while flying:

Super pretty Rainbow

part of the Napali coast

The Napali Coastline

Waimea Canyon

more Waimea Canyon

and more!

Another sea turtle on the same spot on the beach in Poipu that afternoon

We also went up the road to Spouting Horn Park where there is a hole in the Lava rock and when the waves roll in the water "spouts" up through the hole and it looks like really neat.

Another "bird of Kauai" just walking around the parking lot

So the next morning we decided to spend the day on the North side of the island. The whole island is pretty small so it only takes a few hours to drive from one side to the other. The road doesn't connect along the West side because the Napali coast is sheer cliffs and just inland is Waimea Canyon so there is really just no access. There are, however, some incredible hiking trails that you can do in the Canyon and along the Napali that I want to do the next time we go (yes I plan on becoming a regular visitor to this happy place in person and not just in my thoughts). So we got up and drove to the North side. I started off the day with a headache and after only about 20 minutes into the drive my headache exploded into a full blown migraine! I put my sunglasses on and closed my eyes but it was still too much light. So Mindy happened to have a clean sock in her purse that she put her camera in while on the beach so I put it over my eyes and then put my sunglasses over the sock and closed my eyes and tried to picture pure blackness. We have a few pictures of this but they are on Peter's phone and so I don't have them yet. After awhile we stopped and Peter got me an enormous Diet Coke and the caffeine helped ENORMOUSLY!! Each sip I took seemed to help a little bit until we finally got to the end of the road and my migraine had faded to a dull headache. Thank Heavens for ibuprofen and coke to safe the day!! The end of the road found us at a really cool cave with water in it. We stopped and took some pictures and looked around a bit.

We got back in the car and drove back a little ways to Tunnels Beach and found another cave that you could walk back into. It was pretty cool! We explored for a bit and then walked across the street and down the beach to find out if the snorkeling was really as great as we heard it was!

Here is beautiful Tunnels Beach. (This is about how all of the beaches were that we went to. Poipu was a little more crowded while we were there since the waves were all on the south shore so there were a bunch of surfers down there but we were never crowded. Another thing to love about Kauai, amazing beaches and not a gazillion people around to have to share it all with.)

This is on Tunnels Beach too. See what I mean about the mountains looking "soft and fuzzy"? So pretty! I don't have pictures of us snorkeling but it was GREAT snorkeling. It was SUPER clear water and really shallow and a huge reef along a little drop off and there were TONS of fish! Really neat!

Then we headed back down the road some more and were going to check out a secret beach that my brother had told us about. Secret Beach just means that it's not a popular beach that has a name. There are beaches along the entire shore of Kauai and some of them are a little harder to get to so they call them "secret" but to answer the question that several people has asked, secret beaches are not nude beaches. Nude beaches are actually illegal on Kauai. So anyway! This beach was actually CALLED secret beach and there was a place to park at the top of a pretty worn trail that you hiked down to get to the beach. I think it started off as a typical secret beach, but it was so beautiful that word spread about it and the path became a little more well used and there you have it! There were only a few other people on the beach while we were there and it was HUGE and the most beautiful relaxing picturesque beach in the universe!! I did a video of the beach and the waves crashing in and no talking just to try to bring home some of the serenity but it just doesn't do it justice. Guess I'll just have to go back!

The waves on this beach were HUGE and they crashed RIGHT on the shore instead of out a ways so it was fun to play in them. Here's Peter and Shaun getting ready to dive through it. Peter got caught unawares in one wave and it actually sent him head over heals in the wave and then sumersaulting onto the sand! I tried to body surf one wave but didn't think about the fact that they were breaking on the sand instead of onto the water, and I got DROPPED hard onto the sand! Lol! It was so fun even though we all got our swimsuits FULL of sand several times and I only stopped swabbing sand out of my ears from this beach a few days ago!!

Here's Peter getting tumbled by a wave

This is the lighthouse in Princeville that we planned on visiting, but figured we had a great view from our little secret beach so we didn't drive up to it.

We ate lunch in Princeville and then tried some Shave Ice (no D - just shave ice) with macademia nut ice cream at the bottom. YUM!! Peter is enjoying a rainbow flavor and I had a sunrise combo that had mango and papaya and guava. YUM!!!

Here we are overlooking Hanalei Valley. Remember Puff the Magic Dragon who lived by the sea? He frolicked in the Autumn mist in a land called Hanalei? I guess this is where he frolicked!

Then we went to Queen's Bath. Which is a little natural cut out in the lava rocks that forms a pool and as the tide waves come in they fill it up and then the tide goes out and leaves a calm little pool in the lava rocks for you to chill in. I guess the tide had been really low for awhile or something because the water wasn't as clear and nice as it looks in pictures but it was pretty cool! The trail down to it was super pretty though. And there was a little river and a waterfall and it was just really nice and cool under the trees.

Here it is. Queen's Bath

Here's a picture of it from Google. Looks a lot prettier in the picture. I think it was just because the tide was low when we went and there were actually a lot of people. (Well not a lot but maybe 10 or so)

Shaun, Peter and Mindy

Right at the top of this rock and in the middle of the picture on the rock are two little black crabs that were scuttling along the rocks

The shoreline at Queens Bath

Back on the East side of the island near Lihue we went to see a couple of waterfalls since we hadn't really seen any up to this point. This valley here is just across the road from the lookout for Opeaka’a Falls

Opeaka’a Falls

This is Wailue Falls. It is apparently higher than Niagra falls. I guess the official height of this waterfall is 80 feel but the author of the guidebook called "The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook" measured it himself TWICE with fishing line and came up both times with a height of 173 feet! It started to rain pretty hard when we got here and it was getting dark but it was SO beautiful! It's surrounded by the typical "fuzzy" green cliffs of Kauai and then there's a gorgeous deep blue pool at the bottom. There are a few trails to get down to the pool as well but we didn't try it since it was REALLY steep and muddy and dark and rainy! But it was super pretty!

I got this picture from google. It's the exact same shot just in the daytime.

The next day Peter decided to try his hand at surfing. After asking our waiter for some tips (he wore a watch that showed him the tide charts at any given time and was definitely a seasoned surfer) Peter rented a board and went out to where the real surfers were. Not wanting to get in their way, but wanting to be where the waves were, he waited and waited and paddled and kicked and tried to "catch a wave" but it was a LOT harder than it looked. He was out there for a long time and came in exhausted and a little sunburned but at least he could say he tried! He almost got a couple of them but never quite got up. Oh well!

Here we are on our lanai just before headed out to the airport to come home. SUCH a bittersweet day. We missed the kids like CRAZY but we just did not want to leave. It was seriously the most relaxing amazing vacation you could possibly dream of! You just can't go wrong if you go to Kauai. That's all there is to it!

This is the view from our lanai looking down onto the pool and deck for our resort

This was our view of the ocean from our lanai

This was the last sunset of the trip and it was not actually in Hawaii it was somewhere over the Pacific ocean but beautiful nonetheless.

Along the walls in the airport in Kauai they had pictures of hula dancers with gorgeous Kauai landscapes behind them and the word to the "song" that they were dancing to and this was the last line and I thought it just summed up the vacation perfectly, "Kauai is perfect, set in the calm". It is simply put - PERFECT and calm is a perfect way to describe it. Calm, peaceful, serene, relaxing, beautiful, and just plain perfect! What a wonderful way to celebrate 10 years of marriage with the most amazing man I could ever dream of!