Hawaii 2023 Day 1 & 2, Sept 13 & 14

Oh man, it is time to talk about our Kauai trip. I have been looking forward to this. What an absolutely lovely trip. We had a ball. 

One thing that made this trip so fun was that we kept it as a surprise for the kids. We booked stuff for the September trip in March. We decided to tell them one week before to give them a little bit of time to get school things worked out before we left. They missed six days of school so it was a fair bit of time to make up. 

Telling them was so fun. We told them we had an early birthday present for Daddy that we wanted them to open. This was one week to the day before we left. We wrapped their snorkels in a big box. They opened the box to see the several boxes, "Happy 40th birthday to Daddy. We're going somewhere fun." Then they had to follow the clues around the house to spell the letters for Kauai. They unscrambled them, which was adorable. But the real surprise was when we told them we were leaving in one week. It was so fun. We started a countdown with a sign on the wall.   

Well the one week flew by! I spent a lot of time harvesting and preserving our garden produce. The kids quickly contacted their teachers and tried to organize make up work. Also, the cheap flights that we got were really early in the morning. We gradually worked our schedule earlier and earlier that week. Just a 1/2 hour earlier to bed every night and 1/2 hour wake up time each morning. We had to wake up at 3:30am to make it up to the airport and make our flight, so we didn't want that to seem killer. I think it worked great. Everyone seemed great and happy despite the early hour. 

I did a lot of last minute purchasing to make our trip a little bit nicer. Things like velcro strips to hold cords, electronic organizers, travel pillows and blankets, and even an IPad to download Bluey on. That on wasn't so last minute, but it was super useful. 

I think it all worked great. We had a long, but comfortable flight to Lihue. I was surprised that none of the kids slept, but they were so happy to just watch their shows. Especially Darcy. I think that might have been the highlight of the trip for her--watching Bluey for hours. 

The super cheap blankets were a good purchase. 

The sunrise leaving Utah. 

Lovely clouds as we were leaving Utah. 

Our first glimpse of Kauai! 

Despite the happy attitude of our little travelers, that first day was a little rough. Darcy fell asleep almost as soon as we left the airplane and she was in her stroller. John got the Turo rental (van) while we waited at the airport. 

We had to stop at Walmart as we left Lihue. We had to get groceries for the trip. I was surprised at how small the food selection was. The prices were expensive, which was no surprise. 

The kids stayed in the van with sleeping Darcy, and it took longer than we thought to get the groceries. So we grabbed a couple smoothies as a way to say thank you for their patience. We got a pineapple and a mango. They were like $8 each, but man they were way better than I would have thought. They were fantastic. I wish we could have gotten more, but we never saw that same truck their again when we drove past. 

Chickens in the parking lot. 

This is a good spot for whale watching (at another time of the year). 

Unfortunately when we got on the road to drive up to Princeville, Darcy woke up so so mad. She was hysterical in the car, so we stopped at a lookout viewpoint to try to calm her down. This did not work. Her constant screaming got to Holland pretty quickly and made her yell and cry. After a few minutes of this, Miriam started getting really upset. This chain reaction was a quick escalation that made that afternoon kind of painful. There really wasn't much we could to do to help the situation. We needed to get to the rental and change out of our warmer clothes, and all settle down. Unfortunately, even though it was 5pm Utah time it was only 1 pm Hawaii time, so our rental wasn't ready yet. We walked in on the cleaning woman and asked if we could put a few things in the freezer and then leave until she was ready. She seemed a little annoyed but still let us do that. 

We were stuck in our long pants and needed an activity to cheer everyone up. We ended up driving into Hanalei and getting shaved ice. I don't regret this decision at all. Wishing Well Shave Ice was probably my favorite thing we bought on our trip. I wish we could have gotten more at some point, but there was too much to do in too little time. 

I think we got the Sunset, Pina-colada, and the Hanalei Sweetie. 

We got three to share, and they were all delightful. 

After our shave ice we went back to the rental to see if they were ready. Ellie and I walked around behind the building to the jungle. It was so pretty! 

This hibiscus was as big as Ellie's face!

Lovely purple hibiscus!

Eventually we got into the rental! Man, we loved that place. There was a big master bedroom and a giant loft with two queen beds. It was the perfect size for us. I loved the wooden ceilings. Those window slats just didn't close. I think it is funny that the windows just don't close in Hawaii. They have screens on though. 

It was pretty toasty especially that first day when we weren't used to the humidity. The ceiling fans were kind of a joke. They didn't actually seem to move air even though they were spinning. We don't understand how that could be possible. 

There were patios on the east and west side of the apartment. We were on the 3rd floor so it was a bit of a thing to bring all of the stuff up. We are also the opposite of minimalist packers, we are maximum  packers, so there was a lot to cart up those stairs. Fortunately there parking lot was close, and we were finally able to settle in.  

Such a cute rental!

We crashed early that night! We went to bed about 7pm. John woke up the next morning at 2am thinking he wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep. We actually woke up for the day around 3:30ish. That was so nice! We had so much time in the morning together to get things done, be together, and watch the sunrise. This ended up being our favorite thing about the rental--watching the sunrise above the jungle from our 3rd floor balcony. It was delightful!

Giant avocado tree! We tried one of the avocados on the ground, and it wasn't amazing. I think it might be a different variety and tasted funny to us. They were humongous avocados though. 

First activity for the day was a hike to Ho'opi'i Falls. This was near Kapa'a in the central north island. We had to get there early to get one of the few street parking spots. We understood it to be a shady 1.8 mile roundtrip hike to two different waterfalls. We were also expecting slippery and muddy. This all proved to be true. It was so shady that our hats felt a little pointless. The hike didn't seem long but it was challenging in ways that our AZ and UT hikes have never. It is one thing to think, yeah it will be slippery and muddy, and another to try to hike through it. I think I anticipated more deep mud, but that wasn't it. It was more like an inch of slippery, slime, mud on the trail. It was shockingly easy to loose your footing and fall. One chant we had that hike was "Matchy, matchy brown bum." I carried Darcy in the pack, and it was cute that she would grip me so tight to help me not fall. 

It was fantastic though! Everyone kept saying, "This is my new favorite hike." It was so slippery, but fun to traverse through the jungle. I loved the strangler figs on the large trees (that's a horrible name). Even though it was a relatively short hike, we kept a slow pace because of the mud, and stopped for about 1 million photos. We noticed on this trip that it takes much longer TO the endpoint than BACK from it, solely because of photo taking.  

Old time car mostly buried in the mud! 

We made it to the first falls which were actually the one that was further away. 

We explored around this waterfall for a bit. One or two kids ended up stepping the stream. 

It is just so gosh, darn pretty. Really. 

On the walk back we took a wrong turn at some point, and so we got a few extra steps in. I was surprised how many trails crisscrossed the path we were on. We also found out that we needed to exit the path for a bit to find the second waterfall. We could hear it and see it through the trees, but to get closer we had traverse a pretty steep decline with some rock scrambling at the end. This was such a fun hike, and it didn't even end up being our favorite of the trip. Hiking in the jungle is amazing, and thankfully we didn't run into anything gross like snakes, just had fun exploring as a family. 

Love the wild hibiscus in the jungle.

Wild pothos that were huge!

Next up for the day was a boat trip up the Wailua River to the Fern Grotto. The Wailua river is the only navigable river in all of the Hawaiian Islands. It starts at the wettest place on earth Mt.  Wai'ale'ale. The river tour was fun. They had some dance presentations and a guide that told us about the history and stories of the Wailua River. They even taught us a little hula on the way back with plenty of jokes. The Fern Grotto was a popular destinations for weddings and was made famous by Elvis Presley's song "Blue Hawaii." There have been a few times when it had to close--damage from a hurricane, rock fall, and the sugar cane farm above it closed, the ferns all dried up (turns out it had inadvertently been supplying the right climate for the ferns. Donations and government funding was able to restore it after some time, but visitors are no longer allowed in the cave. 

We only got yelled at once because Darcy was leaning too far over the edge. 

Massive ginger plants!

I love the pink ginger plant. 

Hala tree--the leaves of the Hala (or Lauhala) tree are plaited into durable and highly prized hats, mats, baskets, jewelry, and thatching material. The Hawaiian home of old had sleeping mats, pillows, and sometimes in a ceiling made form lauhala. The fruit were made into attractive leis often in combination with maile or lau'ae. The fruit which smells good but is fibrous was used as a famine food. The dried fruit was used as a paintbrush for decorating kappa and is still used today. Charcoal from hala was used in various mixtures used to dye and waterproof canoes. 

After the Fern Grotto we headed to Tiki Tacos for lunch. This place was popular and not that cheap for a little taco shop. It was funny that the chickens outside were particularly aggressive. The owners even gave us water guns to shoot at them if they got too close. Shocker, this was a big hit with the kids. This led to a new verse in the "Oh you can't get to heaven" song. 

Oh you can't get to heaven

In Kapa'a 

Cause the chickens will come

And eat you raw!

The rain started dumping while we were waiting for our tacos. We were glad to have that little awning over the tables to hide in. We enjoyed our tacos!

After Tiki Tacos, we spent the rest of the afternoon at Lydgate Beach Park. This was a nice spot to do some beginner snorkeling. There is a rock wall surf break that surrounds the little lagoon. The fish weren't that amazing until they were. It was like "little fish here, little fish there, oh here are all of the huge fish right in front of me!" It was great, although not the best snorkeling of the trip. 

Before we headed back to the rental we went to Costco to get a pizza and mango smoothies for dinner (not very good compared to the fresh ones from the smoothie truck) and pick up some Costco food for other meals on the trip. We had to wait quite a while for our pizza, but it was cheap and filling. After that we headed back to the rental and crashed after our long, fun day.