Hawaii - Day 7 (Thursday) - Waimea Valley and our 4th Anniversary

If you missed Day 1-6, scroll down. You may need to click older posts at the bottom of the page.

I've had to take a blogging break this week. We have all come down with nasty colds which has taken its toll on all of us.

On the seventh day on our Hawaiian vacation and our last full day on Kauai we headed south to explore the Waimea Valley. It has been described as the Grand Canyon of Hawaii.

We debated on spending the day by the pool or site seeing. We decided to go site seeing and make the most of our last day.

Before heading out on another adventure, we had a great breakfast at our hotel. Here are a few photos from the restaurant.

This is looking up Waimea Canyon from the beginning of the road. The road was 18 miles one way to the very end.
These are sugar cane fields, some of the last ones in Hawaii.

I loved this waterfall. It wasn't on the map OR a "must see" in the book, but I loved the color and the contrast between the water and the dirt.

Here is Waimea Canyon. It was very large and beautiful, but hard to see. The storm clouds hang out here and so it was always a gamble if we were going to see much.

Here is an example of the mass abundance of chickens and roosters, everywhere!

This is the very end of Waimea canyon. We should be able to look over this edge and see the NaPali coast. No luck today.

When we got back to the hotel, we had 1 hour to go to the pool before it was time to get ready for dinner. The pool was great and Oliver loved it. Keith and I took turns going down the slide, which was SO FUN!!! Oliver didn't quite make the height requirement. Maybe next time, buddy.
I thought I took more picture of the pool, but I guess not. This is one of the hidden hot tubs.
Sept 25, it was our 4 year anniversary.

We went to dinner at the Beach House (below) in PoiPu. It was right on the water and we could watch the surfers from our table.

http://www.the-beach-house.com/

According to the hostess, we had the best seat in the house. Maybe she says that to everyone, but we really did have a great seat. We think we can thank our travel agent, Jeff, for that.
http://www.all-inclusivevacations.com/home/ View to the Left of our table. You can see some people in front of the palm tree enjoying the nice sunset.

Sunset Photo Moment


View to the Right of our Table.

Dinner was excellent. Everything had been caught fresh THAT DAY!!! I don't know that we've ever had fresher fish. The service was excellent, the view was breath taking and reminiscing the past four years was priceless.

Earlier in the day, Keith was having cold symptoms. We had stopped to get his some Dayquil, but once dinner was over, he thought he was done for also. We had to pay for the nanny for a minimum of 3 hours and we were back in 2.5 hours. He didn't care. That evening he had a high temperature (not that we had a thermometer handy) and felt ill. He was ready for bed, early. I didn't think it was too bad since it was the season premier of Gray's Anatomy. WOO HOO!!! Keith fought this cold the rest of the vacation and all of the next week. He refers to it as the Polynesian Curse. He thinks it is because he was laughing at the hula dancers at the Luau. Maybe So!

Can't get enough of Waimea Valley and the Hawaiin Sunset in PoiPu, go to:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=19ph730x.8qtm16s5&x=0&y=-cpp9le&localeid=en_US

Hawaii - Day 6 (Wednesday) - North Kauai

If you have not seen Day 1-5 of our Hawaii vacation, scroll down. You may need to click other posts at the bottom of the page.

On the sixth day of our Hawaiian vacation, we jumped in the rental car that Keith called "Mr. Ugly" (because it definitely was) and headed North on the island of Kauai. It was going to be an all day adventure and we had a busy agenda ahead of us. We didn't make it to everything, like the secret beach. We kind of figured it wasn't so secret anymore since it was in our travel book. HA!

Carrie and Oliver getting ready for the day!

This is Opaeka's Falls, which was the only water fall we were able to go and see. We ran out of time for the others. We had to take turns seeing it since Oliver was sleeping in the car. It didn't make sense to pull him out when we could walk to see it. We saw many things this way over our vacation by taking turns while Oliver slept in the car.
On our way North, we stopped at Duane's Ono Char Burger. It was rated the best burger in Kauai in our tour book, Kauai revealed. It was 10:50 AM when we rolled through Anahola and we nearly missed it. Anahola was a VERY small town, even though in the book it said there was no way we could miss it. The book also said that it was pricey, but the burgers were about $6 each. We thought that was great since that was the price of a burger at Burger King or McDonald's in Hawaii. We were the second customer to order and it turned out to be a good thing. The crowds piled up behind us.

Oliver happily anticipating his chicken strips. We figure he's too young to man handle a burger. Besides, he LOVES chicken strips. I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact I craved them and ate them constantly while pregnant. Chicken strips with ranch, YUM!

SO... this is it. The best burger meal on the island. We must say, it was QUITE tasty. The marionberry shakes were suppose to be fabulous also, but we disagreed. The funny thing is that we didn't really take pictures of any of the fancy seafood dishes we ate, just the best burgers on the island. HA HA!!
Keith and Oliver enjoying their lunch. We read in the book that stray cats and chickens would be plentiful in search of dropped crumbs. We didn't any and it sure was their loss since Oliver manages to redecorate the ground below him with food. Are you wondering why chickens are plentiful? They are EVERYWHERE in Kauai. The roosters would be cock-a-doodle-doing all night long, way before the sun came up. For such a quiet island, it was quite apparent in the middle of the night when there was a rooster right outside. I guess, many years ago there was a hurricane and all of the chickens escaped from their pens. Now, they run wild on Kauai. Kind of funny!

This is the Kilauea Lighthouse from the view point. It was beautiful! We didn't go up to the lighthouse because it was a $5 entrance fee and we didn't have time to spend there. It was just going to be a quick stop. Besides, you couldn't actually go up into the top.
Oooo.... zoom lens, courtesy of Keith a couple of Christmas's ago.
As Oliver would get fussy in the back seat so we would stop to check stuff out. Here were are at a beach that was beautiful. If I was to guess, I would say it was Lumaha'i Beach, but there really wasn't a sign.

Many miles down the road, Oliver once again expressed his desire to free himself from the car seat. We found a beach with a park out front, which was a PERFECT place for Oliver to crawl around. Little did we know, the beach just beyond the grass was FABULOUS!! We spent about an hour letting Oliver crawl around in the grass and then we went and checked out the beach. We knew that it must be serious when we saw this sign that said surfing was for experts only. These waves were not like the mild ones we saw people learning on in Waikiki. Needless to say, we didn't see any surfers here.
This is Tunnel's (Makua) beach. We started trekking down there and then decided it was much farther than it looked and Oliver is much heavier than he looks.

This kind of gives you perspective on how big the waves are. Of course, photos never do this kind of scene justice. The sand/beach became quite steep immediately in the water and you had to be careful because the waves would sneak up on you fast and deep. For action shots of Keith running away from them, see the link at the bottom of the post.

These are just pictures that I like of Keith and Oliver.

If you turned around on the beach and faced the opposite direction (waves at your back, brave move, ha) this is what you saw. A complete contrast of the ocean.
From here, we drove to the end of the road at Ke'e beach. The parking was packed and it didn't seem worth the effort to pull Oliver out once again, so we started to head back south. Plus, there was more on our agenda to see. However, we had to drive to then end of the road because this meant that we had officially been all of the way around the island since we came the other way by boat the day before.

This photo is the valley in Hanalei. If I remember correctly these are Taro fields, which is used to make poi. Poi is served at luau's and is we were told it tastes like glue. We didn't try it ourselves.

If Hanalei sounds familiar but you can't place it, you may recall that Puff the Magic Dragon lived by the sea, he frolicked in the autumn mist of a land called Hanalei.

By this time, it was getting late in the day and we had to make a decision on what we were going to see last. We opted for Queen's Bath in Princeville. We don't know what we missed with the other sites, but we can say that Queen's Bath is definitely a must see/swim.

To get there, there was about a 10-15 minute hike down a very slippery slope. It was kind of clay like dirt and since Kauai gets rain on and off all day, it was very slick. You can see all of the erosion from the run off and the tree roots exposed.

Oh, how we wish we had the Kelty back pack for Oliver.
Keith and Oliver walking along the lava rocks to Queen's bath.

Queen's Bath in the foreground.
Family self portrait.
We decided that this wasn't really an optimal place for Oliver to swim, so we set up a camp for him on the rocks above and we took turns dipping into Queen's Bath. This is Keith debating on the best method of entrance. He eventually went for the classic canon ball.
This is Queen's Bath with me in it. You might be able to see me to the right side with my arm in the air. All was great until a big wave would come crashing over the lava rock wall.
Here comes a big wave....

... and there go all of the people.
I made it!!!

Queen's Bath was beautiful. The contrast between the black rocks and the blue water was amazing. The bath itself was spectacular to swim in and adventurous with the waves. Oliver had a great time sitting on the rocks above watching all of the action.

After our long day of car touring and a dip in Queen's Bath, we were ready for dinner. We needed a place that was beach attire appropriate. We turned to our trusty guide book and found that there was a great BBQ place in Kapa'a, which was on our way home. Every seat had an ocean view since the seating was tiered and the whole front of the restaurant was open air. Not only was the view great and the atmosphere perfect for beach attire, but the food was excellent. We loved it and Oliver loved the baked beans. YUM!! It also didn't hurt that the waitresses were in love with Oliver and they were amazed by the kiddopatomus mat that he eats off of. (blue mat you may have seen in pix).
After a long day, we headed back to the hotel to start all over the next day by going South.

For additional photos, go to

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=19ph730x.4i34jdo5&x=0&y=-bh3qv1&localeid=en_US