I had been wanting to do some hikes around the island, but b/c of The Bug's cold and fever we opted to stay a little closer to the condo. However, on Saturday my mom & dad offered to watch The Bug at the condo while Shayne & I did a hike. There are lots of great hikes on Kauai, but I my friend Kaye had hiked the entire Na Pali coast a few years before and loved it...minus the treacherous parts. :) So, we opted to drive up the North Shore and hike just the first 3-4 miles of the hike. It takes at least 2 days to do the full hike.
To say it was raining a bit would be like saying the Shayne likes to fly-fish. It was a torrential down pour. Not kidding...have never seen it rain so hard...ever. We hiked in our swimsuits, b/c we were as wet hiking as we would have been swimming. Here's an example of how wet we were: I had forgotten to take out 2 rolls of mentos and 2 of The Bugs board books out of the backpack. The mentos were completely dissolved, and the books were completely saturated and dripping. I had to salvage them by carefully opening each page and placing it under the ceiling fan for a night.
Anyway, you can see in some pics on our way back down how the water falls, that aren't normally there, were flowing onto our trail, and we were literally walking in a small creek. It was sorta craziness. We had intended to hike up to some falls, but we couldn't find the trail head after crossing the swollen stream. So, we stopped in the stream, found some big rocks and had lunch...literally in the middle of the stream-now-small-river. Good thing we have a water-proof camera...sorry about the water spots on some of the pics.
It was a pretty cool hike. There were some massive stands of bamboo trees...you can see me standing next to one of the stands. We found some local fauna, aka: frogs. There were a bunch of them out and about in the rain. Shayne eventually caught one, b/c boys can't resist catching frogs can they? We were actually surprised at the lack of other wildlife...even birds.
We were also surprised at the population of people hiking this trail. Not just the number of people out in the rain, but the lack of preparation they had to hike in the downpour. However, some people were very much prepared in all sorts of rain gear and hiking boots. It was way too warm to have that much gear on. We were happy with our swimsuits and Keen sandals.
Over-all it was a fun day. It was so nice to just be able to do something like this with Shayne. We had fun just hanging out. We stopped after the hike in Hanalei and had lunch as well. It was a fun date for us.
The pics at the bottom are what my parents did with The Bug. My mom took him to the pool, but he liked the hot tub better. :) They also took him out in the stroller and just wandered around Kapaa. My dad said it was the best day for him, b/c he got The Bug all to himself, without a mom to distract him. That was the day The Bug really warmed up to my dad, after that my dad could take him and carry him around without him fussing to get back to Shayne or I. So, while Shayne & I really appreciated the day to ourselves, I think my mom and dad appreciated the day with The Bug to themselves just as much. :)
The last pic is of my dad and one of the incredible sunrises on the beach outside our condo. I didn't see a lot of those, I was usually sleeping. But, my mom & dad got up each morning, grabbed The Bug, who was also awake, and went out to the beach, watched the sunrise, read their scriptures, and explored the small tidal pools.
p.s. Sorry about the pics that are not rotated correctly. I would explain but I already have diarrhea of the keyboard when it comes to explaining my posts. :)
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