I could stare at the first picture forever. The way the ocean blends into the sky so you don't know where one ends/begins. OMG. Heaven. This place is a pure slice of heaven. I will say that Kyle almost had some minor heart attacks as I took pictures of the view because I was illegal and hopped the safety railing to get closer past the tree line. It's all fun and games until you're in peril, I suppose.
As we walked around the ridge of the canyon the clouds kept moving in and taking over. We joked that it was The Nothing from "The Neverending Story" coming in to destroy everything. Unfortunately, if The Nothing did take over Falkor wasn't around to save us.
We tried to stick around to see if the view came back but once the clouds descended into madness there was no view for quite awhile. I'm just happy we got to see a short glimpse because if I had driven all the way up there for clouds I would have been upset. Outside of the canyon, the sky turned back into it's brilliant blue self; The Nothing hadn't taken over the beaches so we headed to the coast.
Lydgate Beach Park is touted as one of the best beach parks on the island. It was nice, I guess, but covered in driftwood making less room to sit on the sand. We ended up sitting farther back and having to climb over the driftwood each time we wanted to get into the water. To beat the heat (and to avoid the burning of the sun), Kyle sat in the shade of some trees while in the distance I saw that someone had built an A-frame fort to lay under. I'm kicking myself for not getting a closer look, maybe playing a rousing game of indians in a wigwam, but I was preoccupied with some Fire Rock Ale and a book about WWII. That's a hardcore vacation read!
The one big adventure we planned began the following morning... a 5 hour zipline through the rainforests of Kauai. The ziplining was done on the Kipa Ranch which is where they filmed a bunch of movies, most recently "The Descendents" with George Clooney. Holla back, Georgie! One of the ziplines was 1,800' long straight across a valley. You flew above the canopy of trees and had a gorgeous mountain view. Quite possibly the best view though was Kyle in his snug outfit and helmet. Am I right?
The company, Outfitters Kauai, also has exclusive rights to a "blue pool" on the ranch. They built a water zip over it along with a couple diving platforms; one of them was 16' high! Looking down at the water from that platform was nothing short of scary. But after psyching myself out for a couple of minutes I finally decided to jump off... halfway down, I started screaming and it wasn't because I was scared! It was because I was like "OMG WHY HAVEN'T I HIT THE WATER YET!" I hit the water with a giant splash, my bathing suit bottoms went right up my rear end and all I wanted to do was jump off again.
Five hours of adventure was enough for one day though. Afterwards, I was pretty tired so we hit up a food stand called "Puka Dog" where they carve a hole in a Hawaiian sweet roll, plop a giant hotdog inside and cover it with lilikoi mustard, if you so desire. It was easily the best hotdog I've ever had.
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| Magnificently delicious! |
We closed out the first week of vacation by hanging out at the sand pool with the resident chickens, local pig and each other. I was trying to infuse the last drops of relaxation into my blood.
I absolutely loved this island and it's chill level; I know I don't have much to compare it to since I've only been to two islands but that just means I need to invest in visiting all of them! What's next? MAUI!
Anyone want to help me earn more Hawaiian Airline miles so I can afford to go back ASAP?
I'm not kidding!
