The Beginning of Adventures In Kauai

Derek and I planned to go to Kauai last year for our 30th anniversary, but then cancer happened and so I had surgeries and radiation, and we went on a very lovely trip to Salt Lake City instead.  We went to Kauai for our 31st anniversary instead -- which is this coming Saturday. 

Last year Kauai had even more rain than the lots of rain they usually have and roads had to be closed.  Even this year the road to the north wasn't open as far as it used to be (and they shut down a part of it while we were there because of the rain) and so we couldn't get to some of the things we would have liked to.  That being said, Derek managed to drive over 400 miles back and forth on the main road and on about every side road we could find. 

This is in Seattle (I think) on our way to Hawaii.  We were sending pictures to our kids.
We weren't this awake on the flight home.

All of the rest of these pictures are from Wednesday May 1st.

Creepy crabs.  These were on the rocks on the beach by the hotel we stayed in. 
Derek liked to check on the creepy crabs every day!

This is the beach by our hotel on Wednesday morning.  Almost every beach we went to had
impressively huge driftwood -- which was more like whole drift-trees (minus branches and leaves).

Blurry rooster.  There are a LOT of chickens roaming around Kauai.  They cock-a doodle-dooed every
morning to wake us up, and then all day long.  Fortunately for me I found it really hilarious to have so many chickens roaming around and I thought the Roosters were particularly funny as they made sure
we all stayed awake all day.

 Tia texted us that she would pay us $20 to bring her one.  Travis (Trisa's husband) offered to bring Tia one from Cedar City for $15 dollars.  I loved Tia's response and am hoping she won't mind me putting it here so I can keep it.  It made me laugh -- and that was such a good thing!  Tia said, "Slightly less cool if you didn't catch it, smuggle it and then tranquilize it with a special brand of nature sunshine herbs and put it in a suitcase and then give it mouth to mouth and resuscitate it and put it in a little leash and bring it to my door... But thanks for the gesture! Haha" 

They have the coolest trees in Hawaii!  This was by our hotel room door.

This was just another picture of chickens before we realized exactly how many we'd see.
A different day we were at a park and a lady was feeding the chickens here pizza crust.  It was just like
a flock of hungry ducks.  I thought that was funny too -- maybe just because it was a park -- and they were not ducks.

More chickens

Derek at an overlook.  People were kayaking on the river below.

The Opaekaa Falls.  You just drive up a road and into a parking lot and take a picture.  No hiking required.

This is the explanation of where we were in the next couple of pictures.

Derek and me in the sacred forest.

I am not a great selfie taker.  I feel like I always end up looking a bit awkward!  For me, this is a good one!

The roots on these trees are awesome!  You do NOT want to try to walk around without looking down.

Vines taking over the trees.

It rained most of that day but the sun came out and so we tried out a beach.  It still rained on us a couple of times while we were there and I was a bit chilly and we walked up and down a few times but never got in the water.  This was the only time we bothered to put on our swimsuits.  I think I wore shorts on three days and was cold for one of those days.

That was our Wednesday.  We went to Walmart that morning and got breakfast food for the week and peanutbutter and jelly and bread that we had for a lot of our lunches and frozen food to microwave for dinners.  The hotel had free movies for rent -- which worked out well this night.  It was the only night we had a movie that wasn't scratched.  The next night the movie was scratched but we think we saw most of it, and the next day we gave up and took it back and didn't bother with trying movies after that.  I think we were in bed by 8:30 (12:30 a.m. our time).

I had a bad headache the day we traveled and this day -- but it was a good day anyway.