Kauai Adventures: Night and Day 1

We arrived in Kauai late Friday afternoon and after about a 45 minute drive to our Pali Ke Kua condo, we arrived just in time for our first Kauai sunset! We enjoyed the view we would have for 2 more days (before we moved to the St. Regis hotel) and then decided to drive to Hanalei, which turned out to be our favorite little chill town for the rest of the week! I marveled at the one lane Hanalei bridge and the driving etiquette that was posted on a sign before the bridge--so cute and such a sleepy, fun, relaxed town! We went back to our condo and hit the hay to get ready for our first real day in Kauai!

We woke up on Saturday at 6am--partly because our bodies told us it was 11am and partly because our bedroom had 2 huge windows on 2 walls with the bright sunlight streaming in! Our first rainbow was waiting for us too---not a bad way to wake up! We decided to hike down to our condos' beach, Hideaways Beach, and check it out! Chad likes to call it a .01 mile walk down to the beach but a 3 mile hike back up! The beach was beautiful and filled with lava rocks and skittish crabs, but the journey back up was not for the faint of heart---or a 30 week pregnant woman!! What a workout!!

After getting showered up for the day we headed to the Kilueau Lighthouse--the western most lighthouse in the US and also a humpback whale sanctuary, which we enjoyed because we knew Luke would love to hear that! We then drove to a hole in the wall burger joint, Duane's Ono Burgers---a place we heard not to miss and enjoyed some declicious burgers! Craziest thing there were the chickens that were walking all around our feet as we ate. We found out later on our trip, that chickens and birds are everywhere in Kauai---about as common as beautiful Hawaiian flowers, sunsets and rainbows! We also checked out another beach--Moloa'a Beach and chilled there for a bit before we saw some rain clouds moving in and headed to our condo.

Our lanai (porch) at our condo was fantastic. It was right on the edge of a cliff and our views of the Pacific and the Makana Mountain range (the jagged part of the range is known as Bali Hai--from the movie South Pacific) were incredible! I found myself in a love affair with Bali Hai, wanting to capture it in every photo and just feeling a sense of peace wash over me when I looked at it---which was the entire trip!! We enjoyed another pretty sunset that evening and realized that it would be something we would do every night in Kauai!