Kauai - Part 1

No, I'm not in HI anymore, but I am back at work and burning the midnight oil so it's taking me longer to get to my blogging. I'm almost done with the HI blogs, but I did want to do a couple posts on Kauai since we were there for a week.

After three great days in Maui we headed over to the island of Kauai. I know you won't believe me, but Kauai was probably even more beautiful than Maui. We spent our days mostly relaxing and we just sort of went with the flow each day.  If we felt like sleeping in or spending the afternoon resting and reading the internet then we did that. We watched a couple of movies that week and we just took it easy. It was simple to do things on our own schedule because we ended up getting a great last minute deal on a house and so we had our own kitchen and groceries so we could have more of a flexible schedule as opposed to being limited to hotel or restaurant hours.

I guess I was getting camera fatigue at this point because I can only find one picture of the back of the house we stayed in. It was on a nice golf course and this was the hole behind our house that we would watch people play. 

When we arrived we were out looking around and ran into this man who lived here and told us to go to Queen's Bath which was practically next door to where we were staying. You had to hike down a path and then the trail opened up to these hugh rocks jutting out into the ocean. Some of the rocks formed these half-pools that people were jumping into and just floating in. The waves were ridiculous and I forbade Brad from jumping. I actually didn't even give him time to consider it, I just told him it wasn't an option - ha!

These signs were in quite a few places in Kauai, but the first one we saw was on our hike to Queen's Beach. It actually became a joke between us and anytime we would see people doing dumb stuff (which was everyday) we would say "better go back and make another mark!" It sounds awful, but you just had to be there to see what people were doing to understand.  

There were a few waterfalls on the trail. 

And then the trail opened up to this:

This girl was getting ready to jump in and she finally did! 

The smartest people at Queen's Bath that day ;-)

Over a little farther was an actual pool where people were lounging and you actually could jump into this pool without risk of life. Brad jumped a couple of times, but I was too slow on the draw with my camera to get a good picture.

We even saw a sea turtle swimming!

That afternoon we also went to Hideaway Beach which was another beach you had to hike down to. The beach was true to it's name because we went here several times over the week and there would never be anyone here! It was like being on a seculed island!

These trees were in a lot of places, but I thought they were so interesting because the roots stuck out of the ground like that!

The next day we went snorkling at Tunnels Beach and another nearby beach called Ke'e Beach. Both of these beaches were big, traditional beaches with no hiking involved :)

Tunnel's Beach

Ke'e Beach

Another weird tree!

The next day we drove to Poipu and visited some popular spots.

Spouting Horn is a lookout that for some reason sprays water up in the air and everyone looks at it and takes pictures.

After that we went to Poipu Beach and relaxed for the rest of the day.

The beach had these natural rock barriers that created shallow, warm areas to swim in and it was so nice. There were a lot of families here because it was perfect for children.

Towards the end of the day we drove over to this popular surfing beach called Shipwreck Beach and it was just crazy to see the size of these waves!

After that we drove home, but of course we made one more stop to see Wailua Falls. This waterfall was gorgeous and it was right on the side of the road - again, no hike involved!

The MOST interesting thing about Kauai is that there are chickens and roosters everywhere! They are in the parking lot of resturants, shopping centers, beaches, parks, the side of the road, etc. I took tons of pictures of them because I couldn't believe where I would find them. I mean, where else in the world can you lie on the beach and hear a rooster "cock a doodle doo" like ten feet away from you?!?!? Supposedly a hurricane dispersed these chickens all over the island at one point and the government never did anything to round them up so they just live everywhere!

That's all for now...Kauai to be continued...