There Is Sunshine!

Most days in Kauai had some sun, but there was also a lot of rain, and wind, and clouds.  Friday was sunny.  I loved Friday's sunshine!

This is the dorkier of two pictures, but it shows the background best.  This day we headed towards Waimea and stopped in Hanapepe on the way.  This picture is us on the swinging bridge over the Hanapepe River.

 Hanapepe is a little town that we called the Hawaiin LaVerkin (the southern Utah town where my Dad grew up).  The scenery reminded us a lot of southern Utah with its red rocks.  Some of the houses actually reminded me of the houses in Harlan, KY where my Mom grew up.  I thought it was fun to find somewhere in Hawaii that reminded me of both of my parent's hometowns!

I don't remember where this picture was taken.  I think in Hanapepe.

This is Waimea Canyon.  I have quite a few pictures of it,
but they are all so similar that I won't put them all on here.

Derek and me at the canyon.

So beautiful!

 

Derek at the beginning of the muddiest hike ever.  It was a really long trail to a waterfall.  There was supposed to be a view partway in, and we tried for that, but it is really a miracle that neither of us fell.  Most people fell at least once -- or just turned around and went back sooner.

This is on our way back up, which included some down.  Going down was harder because of the slant of the muddy indents that we used as stairs on the way up. 

I kept trying to capture how cool the mountains looked in the fog, but it mostly didn't work :-)

Obviously I thought it was worth trying over and over again!

The Waimea side of the island is the dry side.  It was quite different looking at the tail end of the road south.

I really didn't mean to take a picture of the man and his truck, but this does give the larger view!

Naturally I had to send Tia a picture of more chickens!

Derek took a picture in front of these plants for my Mom.  They are "Mother-in-law Tongue" in the wild.  We call them house plants.  My Mom's looks great.  Mine -- not so much.

We found some cool things, like this walking trail at a golf course, because Derek wasn't shy about turning in to every side road to see if it was something cool.  This was a pretty trail right off of the main highway -- I think.  Some main road :-)

Derek was wearing water shoes, and I was wearing sandles, which weren't the best shoes for the trail, but they worked.  Much better than bare feet!

Another view of the same thing.

I really liked the vine covered trees, though I suspect that the vines aren't helping the trees at all!

Such big leaves on so many plants!  Very fun.  Like my hair in this picture!
It's good that Tia cut my hair before I left.  It likes to go poof in humidity and it was really
very well behaved considering!

Derek in the Japanese rock garden.  It was attached to the golf course too.

I loved the pretty tree.

Derek loved to take the picture with me and the pretty tree.  I think the flowers and my shirt maybe don't go so well together.  And I guess it might be a bush.

That was our sunny day.  I still wore a jacket in the morning, and in the canyon, but the weather was generally full of sunshine.