Hawaii? Again?

So, I had a wonderful adventure on the Big Island of Hawaii in November with my friend Lynn. One more place on my list of places to visit crossed off.  Check!

So when my sister, Erin said, "let's go to Hawaii!" I was less than enthusiastic.  However, she had a place for us to stay in Kauai, I had an Alaska Airlines companion fare available, so I thought, why not?

So here we are, staying at the Point at Poipu on the southern end of the island of Kauai. This is the oldest island in the chain, and claims to have one of the wettest place on earth.

The active volcano on the big island of Hawaii is about 200 miles to our south, and there don't appear to be any issues related to that here.  However, I would like to add that my friend Lynn and I stayed not far from the village of Kalapana and the Leilani Estates that have been evacuated recently (see previous blog posts in November 2017).  It's kind of eerie to know that we were there not too long ago.

We arrived on Monday afternoon.  Nice flight as we were bumped up to first class.  I love being an Alaska MVP, as occasional complimentary upgrades happen.  After gathering our bags, and getting our rental car, off to Costco and Safeway we went to stock up the kitchen.  Unloading and putting things away, we then spent the rest of the evening making our plans for touring the island.

After a leisurely morning, we took off to the west toward Wiamea Canyon, with the intent of stopping wherever we felt we wanted to go, and making a list of places to go that looked interesting on the way that we didn't stop at.  We are on island time, so we didn't make a schedule.

Wiamea Canyon is a ten-mile long 3,000 foot deep gorge that was cut by 6 million years of stream erosion. Known as the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific," The canyon is a mere baby at only 4-5 million years compared to the grand canyon in Arizona, which is 200 million years old.

The next day, we drove north toward Hanalei

The island was hit with a torrent of rain in April (49.7 inches of rain in a 24 hour period) that caused flooding and landslides on the north end of the island near Hanalei that closed roads for a while.  They are still cleaning up, and one can now drive to Hanalei, but the road is closed  just west of the town.    We drove to Hanalei to contribute to the economy by buying yarn and enjoying shave ice.  Yes, we did find the only place on the island to purchase yarn, "Strings and Things," which also sells ukuleles!  And, I had no idea that shave ice done the Hawaiian way includes ice cream on the bottom.  I had lilikoi (passionfruit) with macadamia nut icecream, Erin's was a mixture that was called the "blue Hawaiian.

Hanalei bay was lovely, but the road was closed beyond the town.

On our way to Hanalei, we stopped at the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge. There we saw Red-footed boobies, Red-tailed tropicbirds and Hawaii's state bird, the Nene, or Hawaiian Goose.

There were so many tropic birds nesting in the trees along the cliff, they looked like white flowers.








We have been enjoying the time together.  We are both getting a lot of knitting done, too!

More adventures to go....