Kauai - North Shore

We woke up early, ate a yummy free breakfast at the hotel at 6:00 am and headed to the airport. We returned our rental car and got checked into our flight. I wish all airports modeled their rental car return after San Diego. What an easy process that was! We boarded the plane and flew what seemed like an eternity. What a long flight! Kyle was good for most of the flight but the poor guy was restless for the last 1.5 hours. I’ve never seen him sit in one chair for six hours ever before. We finally arrived and Kyle was waiting to get his lei. He’s watched too many movies! No leis are given out so I promised him I’d buy him one. We collected our bags and headed to get our rental car. 

Kyle was in heaven. There were chickens running around everywhere in Kauai. While we waited in line for our rental car, Kyle stayed outside feeding the chickens from his hand and he was petting the baby chicks. Strangers kept coming up to us inside telling us what a great boy we raised because he was so gentle to the animals. If they only saw the jabs and upper cuts he was delivering to his brother a few moments earlier on the plane! It’s finally our turn to get the car. We're learning about Hawaiian time already. Everyone moves at a slow pace. There is no sense of urgency except for us crazy vacationers who are in a hurry to go relax. The nice Hawaiian woman at the counter asks us if we want to upgrade from our SUV to a convertible Jeep Wrangler for $82 more each day. I kindly declined and she asked us if we were celebrating a special occasion. We tell her we are not but it’s our first time to the island. She says we need to see the island the proper way so she gave us the Jeep for no additional cost. We loaded up our bags and headed toward the north shore. We will be spending the first 6 days in Princeville and the last 5 in Kapa’a. 

We arrived in Kauai at 12:30 but we could not check into our condo until 3pm so we stopped off at Kealia beach along the “highway” and marveled at how beautiful it was. This was exactly what we were hoping to see in Kauai. What a stunning island. Everything is so green. There are birds chirping everywhere and beautiful flowering bushes and trees covering the island. There are no high-rise towers and massive hotels that we can see from the road. The biggest building we saw besides the airport was the hospital. We drove north and made it to Hanalei. We got some food at Chicken in a Barrel and then we tasted heaven! JoJo’s Shave Ice was so delicious! We decided we must eat here multiple times during this trip. We then headed back to Princeville and got some groceries at Foodland. After reading several travel sites, my plan was to stock up on supplies at Costco in Lihue since it is near the airport. Rightfully so, Costco was closed in observance of Memorial Day so Foodland it was. 

We made our way to the condo and holy hotness! Most places in Princeville have no A/C. The condo was closed up all day and the island was experiencing higher than normal temperatures so I thought Mike was going to pass out when we entered. We opened all the windows and started the fans and the place began to cool down. Since it was cooler outside, we decided to “stroll” down a path marked “beach trail” right outside our front door. It wasn’t much of stroll as we climbed under trees and over rocks but the payoff at the end was amazing. We arrived at Sealodge Beach. There were only a few people on it and the snorkeling was perfect. The boys saw a bunch of fish and a sea turtle. Stephen did some rock climbing on the rocks near the beach. As he climbed, I hoped we would not be taking a trip to the ER on our first day here. After all, we are used to visiting the hospital or urgent care at least once during our vacations. After hanging out at the beach for a couple hours we headed home. Mike and I sat outside and enjoyed the view and Stephen was in fully selfie mode. 

We were still on California time so we all crashed by 8pm local time.

Best thing about today: Stephen – “seeing a sea turtle and rock climbing for real”, Kyle – “snorkeling”, Mike – “Jojo’s and getting a free rental car upgrade”, Amber – “Jojo’s and seeing the kids so happy"