We're almost a week back from our first trip to Hawaii and re-entry into all things reality is proving harder than I expected. I know, I know, I'm sure you are all feeling so sorry for me right now! But taking a red eye home, losing five hours of time and getting less than four hours of sleep, returning just in time to pick up our kids from school, and then turning around and helping with a 15-hour event at church makes for a pretty crazy way to get back into the swing of things! Work has been more stressful than normal this week and I think I'm finally kicking a virus that's hung around entirely too long. I'll do some laundry and get milk in the fridge one day again!
Now that that's all out, let's get to the fun part. We had one of the best trips of our lives to beautiful Kauai last week and I still can't believe we were there! Hawaii is obviously a dream destination for many and I've heard people throughout the years say nothing compares to its beauty. Knowing this, we had high expectations, especially since we've had wonderful trips to (far less pricey and faraway) all-inclusive resorts and island-hopped for a week in the Caribbean on a cruise. Well I'm here to say I'm a believer in the hype. Hawaii, specially, the island of Kauai, exceeded every expectation I had. I knew it would be beautiful, but I wasn't expecting it to be so varied in unique beauty and landscape. I knew it was one of the smallest islands, but wasn't expecting it to feel so local. The entire island of Kauai is about the land mass size of Black Hawk County. It's small. So when we were researching our trip, we debated island-hopping and checking out Maui or the Big Island. But one of our favorite parts of traveling, a real must on my list, is to have the chance to immerse like a local would. So we decided to stay on Kauai the whole time, rent a jeep and explore the ins and outs of this little tropical paradise that somehow our country is fortunate enough to claim.
I put as much thought into my packing as I do our itinerary. This was weeks' worth of careful preparation (and lots of online shopping)...
Traveling without the kids gets easier the older and more independent they get, and is especially fun when we have so many people to love on them while we're away. Between Payton spending the night before a super early flight, Lexus picking Mila up from school, Cruz getting to ride his bike to school with the neighbors, Mila getting some bonus days at home with Grandma, and all the chocolate milk and donuts consumed with Papa and Grandma, I don't think the kids missed us too much! And modern day technology, including their Amazon dots in their room, kind of felt like we had walkie talkies with them throughout our trip!
Kauai is one of the smaller Hawaiian islands but is made up of four distinct areas to explore. The North shore is by far the wettest, but also tropical and beautiful because of the rain. The East shore is the most "urban" and includes the two biggest cities of Kapa'a and Lihue. The South shore is the most "resort" friendly, and includes the driest weather and sunniest beaches, and the West side, well, only the dinosaurs live there. The majority of the West side, is made up of jagged coastline known as the Na Pali coast, and is pretty much uninhabited. It's also absolutely beautiful and known for being the backdrop of movies such as Jurassic Park, King Kong, and the TV series, Lost. The island is pretty much accessible via one main highway and takes about 90 minutes to get from one point to the opposite. Beau and I decided to split our time and spend half our trip in the north and the second half in the south. We flew out of Cedar Rapids, had a layover just long enough for breakfast cocktails and naps in Denver, and enjoyed a smooth 8-hour flight to Lihue where we took full advantage of our seat-back entertainment devices. I watched three movies and Beau re-watched the entire last season of Game of Thrones!
Upon landing in Hawaii, we noticed three things right away: 1) the weather temperature was absolutely perfect; 2) rental cars are accessible and an absolute must; and 3) there were wild chickens everywhere. I'm pretty sure someone had told us this before, but I was not prepared to see chickens everywhere. And since the airport (at least check-in and baggage claim) is wide open, I think I spotted my first chicken on the luggage rack! Weird and charming all at once.
We spent our first night in Kapa'a at the Kauai Shores Resort, an affordable and super well-located little resort with one of the only restaurants directly on the beach. We didn't know this when we booked, so it was a fun surprise to check-in and grab our first mai tais with our toes in the sand. We explored the beach, then took advantage of the hotels free bike rentals and got our first taste of Hawaiian life by checking out old Kapa'a town and its shopping and restaurant scene. We grabbed tacos and Jarritos from our first of what would be many food trucks, then took the beach trail back to our resort for a very early bedtime. We were exhausted!
We slept in until 9:00 am...Central time. That means we were up ready to go at about 4:00 am. Thanks, jet lag. But it was Beau's idea to google "best sunrise spots in Kauai" and found us a beach about three minutes from our resort. We sat in the sand with a few other campers and a whole lot of chickens and saw one of the prettiest sunrises we've ever seen. Our first full day in Kauai was not off to a terrible start.
After the sunrise, we found morning coffee at a coffee truck run by two hippie girls that had great style and taste in coffee. I had the best iced coffee with vanilla and coconut cream. It hadn't taken long to gather that this little island cares a whole lot about its community, healthy and locally sourced goods, and preserving the old beauty and charm of Kauai. We felt this everywhere we went and especially when we had opportunities to talk with locals. We got our first lesson on Kauai from three painters during morning coffee. They taught me how to pronounce all the little towns we were planning to visit, told us the best times to avoid the traffic, shared some pretty interesting facts about this faraway place. Like for instance Kapa'a, the town we were in, was the biggest city in Kauai with 10,000, yet the island of Kauai welcomes 30,000 tourists every day.
We decided to explore some of the sights our first day there and drove up to Wailua Falls to see the roadside twin waterfalls. We didn't know we were in for such a breathtaking ride to the waterfalls, and soon learned that just driving around this island was a pretty great way to get a feel for its diverse beauty. This was our first roadside turnoff, where we got out, stood and stared in awe for a bit, and marveled at those marvelous and a little bit haunting mountains in the background.
Our first of many waterfalls in Kauai! Wailua Falls was beautiful, although we later wish we would have attempted the hike to the bottom.
After a quick pit stop back in Kauai for tacos and Tevas for Beau, we decided we were ready for a hike. We spent the rest of our afternoon at Ho'opi'i Falls. This hike took us to two waterfalls along a beautiful stream in the middle of a jungle rainforest. The first hike was easy, the second was not! The trail was pretty muddy, but took us through some unbelievable such as vines and ferns and pretty much every other tropical plant I've attempted to grow in my house.
This was my favorite part of the trail. After climbing through a human version of the game Kerplunk, you get to this opening surrounded by huge trees with vines growing up all sides of them. The sun shines through and creates a pretty epic scene to take in. We kept telling ourselves to stop and soak in the serious beauty of this place.
Our last stop before checking into our hideaway for the night was the Kileau Lighthouse and lookout. It was beautiful and full of birds! It's preserved as a bird sanctuary and home to 5,200 nesting Red Footed Boobies. Save that for your kid's next school report!
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