Hawaii – Waimea (Friday, Day 9) – It's a Wonderful Life!

I know you’ll be shocked to hear that we packed up and we on the road around 9am. Yeah, I know. We had a plan. There are a number of things we want to do on the southern part of the island. One of them is exploring Waimea Canyon State Park on the western side and it takes close to two hours to get there from the North Shore which is where we’re staying. So we packed up and are heading down south (the only way you can get to the west – the road doesn’t completely circle the island) and are stopping to see other sights along the way. The best time to see the canyon is early morning – yeah, imagine that – so we’re spending the night at a little cottage at the base of the park tonight to get an early start in the morning. Along the way …

We stopped at Opaeka’a Falls because it was recommended. Um, there’s a reason you don’t see a picture of it.

Wailua Falls was next on the to do list and we were hoping it was better than what we just left. Bob did a drive by and let me hop out to see if it was worth stopping. Oh yeah baby. This was nice one. Parking was challenging to say the least. And I don’t think I have mentioned it yet (not sure why – hahaha) but there are chickens everywhere! They’re like birds! Or like Bob says, they’re Hawaii’s squirrels. Seriously, they’re all over the place! And we have a rooster by our new condo who likes to start crowing at the butt crack of dawn. I feel like Vinny trying to get some sleep. Or maybe Bob does. He just tells me about it, I sleep right through it. LOL Anywaaaaay, we had some fun taking some shots of the falls, even slowing the shutter down to get the cotton candy effect. Just makes us itch to go take some for real. And lo and behold, I turn around from snapping pictures and what the hell do I see? Good Lord, not just chickens but hells bells there are bloody pigs walking around too!!! For real! It was a mom and two babies. SMH. You just can’t make this stuff up!

Our next drive by was Tree Tunnel which is actually very cool. It just, as the name says, a tunnel of trees. I was having issues with my camera and the tunnel is not a mile long so we were through it before I could blink. Too many cars behind us to slow down enough and nowhere to pull off the road. Bummer. (Edited to add this pic. We drove it again the next day and I was able to sort of capture it as we drove through …)

Next on our list of things to see was Spouting Horn. (We’re plugging all these things into google map to get where we’re going.) So we plug Spouting Horn in and keep trucking. When Siri said we had arrived, we jumped out and looked around … Nothing. Well, we were somewhere because there were picnic tables and bathrooms. Sigh, maybe the horn just wasn’t spouting today. The “blowhole” as it’s called, is where the waves crash into a rocky shore that has an opening so the water goes underneath the rocks and spouts up like a whale blowing water from its blowhole. Sounds really cool, right? We thought so. We’ve seen pictures of it. Anyway, we at our picnic lunch and figured it wasn’t meant to be. Since it was still early, we decided to drive a little bit of the canyon today just to see what we could see. Guess what we ran across? Huh. There was Spouting Horn State Park right there! Hot diggity dog! No clue why Google said we were there a mile back. Whatever. There were all kind of people there – may have had something to do with all the tour buses in the parking lot. It was pretty cool. Eventually, we made our way to the prime photography spot and enjoyed watching and listening to the really cool natural phenomenon. Video 1 of Spouting Horn. Video 2 or Spouting Horn…

The skies had been anywhere from blue and white fluffy clouds to gray and rainy all day. Funny how that changes so quickly around here. You turn a corner and it could be completely different. Right now it looked as if the views from the canyon may be pretty good. They say it’s better to get there early in the morning before the fog rolls in and you can’t see anything. Anytime you can get views up there you just do it. It started out with blue skies and beautiful views on the ocean side, but you could see the clouds and rain in the canyon. We ended up driving the first 10 miles before getting rained out. It was going on 3pm at this point and we were ready to check into our “cottage,” so we turned around and started down the canyon. Of course some of the views we stopped to photography on the way up looked totally different and we had to stop to take them again.

All checked in (for one night) we strolled around to check the place out. Not sure what to expect from what we had read online, it was nice to be pleasantly surprised. These cottage are old but very accomodating and the amenities are very convenient. It was so relaxing to sit out in an Adirondack chair under the big old shade tree with the cool breeze listening to the waves. That lasted um, I don’t know, a half our or so. We still had things to see and places to go!

The first on our list from here was … The Kauai Island Brewing Company for a nice adult beverage. It was pint time! Nice little hopping place. The breeze felt so good. Since we were starving we opted to share some nachos and wait to get something at the Hanapepe Art Show. While we were sitting there, guess what? It started raining. Again. Just a shower though, right? Right.

The Art Show in Hanapepe was only a mile or so away. Not sure what to expect we really didn’t have any expectations. Bob figured parking would be an issue and he was right. Good thing we got there when we did because people were already fighting for parking. This art show is just a locals food, artist and music night gathering on the historic Main Street of the town. It was quaint and we moseyed into quite a few shops. Found some amazing photography (and inspiration), art, wood work, jewelry. That little shower? It decided to hang around. We stayed about an hour (saw a rainbow before we left) and headed “home” for the evening.

Looking for a little something to nosh on since all we had for dinner earlier was nachos proved to be more difficult than we thought. There really wasn’t much around. We got desperate and pulled off the road to see what this little spot had to offer. Thai food, salads, BBQ sandwiches, shave ice, and smoothies. We elected to get smoothies (guava, mango & passionfruit). They were actually very good. It’ll do.