I think I am starting to get the hang of waking up at 7am each day, at least it worked for today. Today's plan is to head to Waimea and then find a hike. We all eat breakfast, pack the cooler with water and snacks and head out the door at 10am. I know people say you should start a lot earlier, but for us this is early. We stop first at the Waimea lookout and walk around and take pictures. The guide book says the trail head starts just after the 8 mile marker. So off we go to look for mile marker 8, we found 9 and the next thing we see is 7. So we find a place to pull over and look at the guide book again. The book says "on right just past mile marker 8". Right now nobody is having any fun, the road is curvy and we are convinced that the book must be off, because we have driven this 2 mile stretch of road what seems like a million times. We finally see a couple of cars parked on the side of the road. Good enough...we look and see what we can find. Yup this is the right spot, I guess we were looking for something more obvious.
Our next adventure was to find food...this group doesn't function well on empty. Mix empty & hot and it's an explosive combination. The request was for "normal" food., food like back home, Applebee's or Red Robin. Just plain & basic. According to google maps our options were limited. I had heard good things from the TA forum about the Grinds Cafe. It seemed like it was as close to "home type" food that was nearby. Boy were we lucky, because the food was really good. DH & our older daughter got hamburgers, youngest got a Chili Burger & I had the French Dip. Everybody was extremely satisfied and it is amazing to see the difference some food can make. We ran into Big Save for a few items since we were so close.
Once we got home the girls headed straight for the shower. DH decided he wanted to try snorkeling behind our house & I decided to soak up some Kauai sunshine. We had a few hours before heading out to the movies. The house we are renting has a huge box of snorkel gear, so DH found what he needed and headed out. There are a lot of rocks in the area and the waves break pretty close to shore, so I kept an eye on him. He wasn't out for too long, the waves crashing just churns up all the sand & you can't see anything. DH & I got ready & we headed out to the movies.
From what I can tell from google maps this is the only movie theater on the island. It's hard to tell for sure because Google maps & Kauai don't play well together. We saw Snow White and the Huntsman, it was alright but I'm not a big fan of all of the magical power stuff. Of course we knew that by the time we got home everybody would be hungry again. Nobody wanted to cook since it was 9:30pm. So we ate Ice Cream...we're on vacation, right?? By the time we cleaned up & discussed our plan for tomorrow it was time for bed. Another night of falling asleep to the sound of the ocean.
Aloha!!!...Captain Andy's Southern Star Sunset Dinner Cruise tomorrow.
Day 4 - June 4th
It only took 4 days to actually right this trip report in real time, well almost -it is being written today. Days 1 - 3 were written after the fact.
As usual I got up at 7am this morning. It was a little harder today I think due to the hike that we did yesterday. Nevertheless, I am up and DH & I are discussing finding the perfect "tropical" hike. Although I am not sure we can convince the girls to go on anymore hikes while we are here. Anyhow today's plan
is to go to McBryde Garden, come home have lunch & get ready for our Captain Andy's Southern Star Dinner Cruise.
After I get out of the shower DH decided to go snorkeling. I politely reminded him we were going to the botanical gardens and had to be there before 10:30. He said he would live if he missed it and if he wasn't back we could go without him. As it turns out we were all ready to go and out the door at 10:15am. Another major accomplishment. I knew I had seen the entrance to it on one of our journey's but I put the address into google anyhow, and of course it showed we had driven well beyond it. So I called them to verify exactly where to go and just about that time we got to the entrance. Starting to hate Google maps!!!We just made the 10:30am tram. The girls both love plants, flowers etc and had a great time taking tons of pictures. It is a very beautiful location and is very interesting to see all of the different trees, plants, flowers etc. At 12 we took the tram back & headed home to have lunch and grab what we needed for our dinner cruise. We left the house at 1:45 and headed out. I put the address into google just for the heck of it. We had seen the location a couple of different times when we were in the area. For a change google played nice today (probably cuz I really didn't care what it said).
We checked in at the office and waited about 5 minutes before we walked down to the boat. The captain did the safety talk first and we were under way. We spent most of our time up front enjoying the view and the wind. The coastline is extremely beautiful and the weather was perfect. There were very few clouds and all of the crew remarked that this was the best day they had seen on the water in probably a month. The crew was absolutely amazing, anything you wanted they would get you in an instant. The girls from the crew went around and talked to everyone, finding out where people were from and telling about the island, it was a very nice touch. We all had taken Bromine before we left & I think everybody was doing ok but at the half way point we decided the wind was too much and we were ready to sit down for a while. We started inside but that was a mistake, so we moved to the back and sat down. At this point some people were about as blue as the water and not having much fun. As soon as they put the sail up and cut the engines, that's when the boat really started bobbing that DH & I started feeling sick. Of course it was time for dinner and although it looked good it did not sound appetizing at all!!. I dug out more Bromine and handed it out and DH & I made our way to the front again hoping that the fresh air would make us feel better. One of the girls stocked us with Ginger ale & crackers and that's where we spent the next half hour. Luckily once they brought the sails back down and started the engines again we started feeling better. I felt really bad for those people that spent most of the cruise feeling yucky. The sunset was absolutely gorgeous. For the most part we had an amazing time, the Captain & the crew were definitely top notch. I would recommend this cruise as it is First Class and tours some amazing Kauai coastline, but...4 hours is a long time and we agreed that we would have done better if it was 2 hours. Obviously having done this numerous times before, the crew packages up your food so you can bring home. Even after being warmed up in the microwave the food was delicious.
Time to go fall asleep to the sound of the waves, I love that sound more & more.
Aloha!!!... Ziplining tomorrow
