Goodbye Kauai

We woke up in time to see one last sunrise in Kauai. It was breathtaking.

We checked out of the hotel.  We had a ton of stuff we wanted to pack in on our last day.  We headed to pick up our kayaks ($70 total) at Wailua Kayak Adventures.  They were a white couple that rented out kayaks.  It was a great fit.  We rented single kayaks instead of sharing a double.  It was nice to have the freedom of having our own kayak, but it meant extra paddling.  The rental place gave us a complimentary dry bag to put our phone and belongings in.

We put in at the Wailua River State Park just a block inland from the Main Hwy 56.  We were able to leave our car parked at that boat launch area.  We picked up the kayaks around 8:30am and were in the river around 9:00. 

There were chickens all over the island (including at the top of hikes that were totally remote). This park had a lot of chickens with baby chicks. By this point, Julie was missing her own chicks and was loving all these momma chickens and their babies.

We paddled a couple miles to the kayak parking area and began the hike to the waterfall.  It was a blast traversing the river knee deep a couple times.  The trail was muddy but was not too strenuous of a spot.  There were a couple close calls of slipping in the mud, though.  I did this hike in water shoes and that worked out well.

At this spot, there was a rope to hold while crossing the river. The river was fairly low, but sometimes can get pretty high.

We got up to the waterfall and had a blast swimming in the pool and admiring the waterfall.  We ate our lunch up there then headed back down the trail back to our kayak.  We only spent about 30 minutes up at the waterfall.

When we got back to our kayaks, we headed back the way we came and then headed up the south fork towards the Fern Grotto.  We went past the fern grotto and found some cliffs for cliff jumping.  Jeff jumped off a couple 15 footers.  Then we headed back down and got out at the fern grotto. 

We walked the walkway up to the fern grotto and enjoyed the scene.  It was pretty and a spiritual place.

We finished kayaking down the river and loaded the kayaks back onto our car and returned the kayaks.  By this time it was around 2:30  We then headed north to Princeville to find the Turtle Cave.  The turtle cave is not publicly advertised, so we had to be discreet. The residents of this condo area don’t want to be overrun by visitors to Turtle Cave so you have to be careful to be cautious.

The Turtle Cave was pretty cool.  It’s a bit of a muddy climb down to the ocean where you then have to scale some rocks to get down to the waves where you have to time it and then scurry up the sand into the cave.  The cave is two-sided, so it’s like a horseshoe shaped cave.  The cave is supposed to have sea turtles but we didn’t see any.  On our way back up we spotted some sea turtles in the water near the cave.

Then we drove down to Hideaways Beach.  There is a 8 or 10 spot parking area, and in that high-brow resort area they are very strict about allowing parking anywhere.  We got to the parking area in the late afternoon, and if Jeff would’ve just been patient for 5 minutes he could’ve got a parking spot from someone who was leaving.  But instead Jeff drove up and parked at a resort up the road where he had to hike to for a mile or so.

The hike to the beach was down a steep trail with chains for hand rails. The beach was awesome.  A really beautiful spot.  We snorkeled for awhile and found several large turtles swimming in the water.  We were able to swim with turtles for 10-15 minutes.  The only down side about this snorkeling was that the water clarity wasn’t great.  It was cloudy water because of the powerful waves that were stirring up sediment--you could only see 5-8 feet in front of you.

We left the Hideaways Beach and drove back down the coast towards Lihue, but we needed a shower for our flight home.  We stopped at a perfect public beach at Kealia Beach, just north of Kapa’a, that had a perfect little water spout shower by the Lifeguard shack.  The shower was near a grassy area and made for a nice way to get clean.  We had brought an extra soap and shampoo from the hotel to use.  It was great.  Showering at the beach just before sunset as we were finishing our vacation was quite an awesome setting (Julie didn’t love it quite as much as Jeff did).  After that, we had to find some dinner, but we didn’t have much time, so we landed at the group of food trucks in Kapa’a that had a Thai place, a Mexican place, and an Indian place.  Jeff got a Thai curry that was surprisingly delicious, not as good as New Thai, but still great.  Julie got Mexican food that was fine.

Finally it was time to head to the airport.  We dropped off our rental car and then took the shuttle to the airport.  We boarded our 9:50pm flight and flew the redeye flight to Seattle on Delta.  Jeff slept a little bit here and there. It was nice to have Julie’s lap to sleep on.  Then we flew the rest of the way to SLC and got home around 10:30am.

Once-in-a-lifetime trip. There were so many highlights--everything felt special. We were so grateful to all that made it possible for us to go--especially Grandma Packer!