Hawaii Day Eleven

We spent this morning relaxing a bit, eating a leisurely breakfast and just enjoying the house and grounds where we're staying. For lunch, we headed into town (Kailua-Kona) to Lava Java, which we both enjoyed, and some shopping. When we got back to our Jeep, we found its identical twin parked in the next spot. There were plenty of parking spots in the lot closer to the stores than this, so we were pretty certain the owners parked next to us on purpose. I was amused enough to take a photo.


Then we decided to put the Jeep's offroading abilities to work and headed out on a very unimproved road over the lava fields.


At the end of the road, we came upon this lovely, nearly-deserted beach:



Interesting lava formations:



For dinner tonight, Jerry wanted to head back to Jackie Rey's, the same restaurant we went to last night. I absolutely refused to go to the same restaurant two nights in a row, so we ended up wandering all over town trying to find someplace decent to eat. Unfortunately, most of the places near the ocean seem to be bars, and hanging around hordes of drunk tourists is not exactly the way I want to spend my Hawaiian vacation. We finally found a nicer restaurant, but the food was not that great, the service was kind of off, and it was way over-priced, so this was not a great experience. It pains me to say this, but I should have listened to Jerry, and we should have gone to Jackie Rey's.

We won't be eating around here tomorrow night, as we're heading to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park for the entire day!

Hawaii Day Five

We started off the day by heading to Spouting Horn Park, which is just about a quarter mile from the beach house where we're staying. This neat blowhole spouts every minute or so as the waves come crashing in.

Then we headed for a local beach and some sun. While the beach was nice, there were too many people for our tastes, so we decided to head west away from all the tourists.


We had lunch at Island Taco in Waimea. I had the chicken taco, which was okay, and Jerry had the Mahi Mahi taco, which he liked a lot.




If you head as far west along the southern shore of Kauai, and then drive even further along a very rutted dirt road, you will eventually come to Polihale State Park, the most western public beach in the United States. It's secluded and stunning; we almost had it all to ourselves.

The view was pretty at first, but as we rounded the dunes . . .


It became simply spectacular.


The Na Pali coast begins just on the other side of those cliffs.

This is my favorite beach ever. I've never considered myself much of a beach girl, but it turns out that was just because I haven't been to the right beaches. If not for the sake of my skin, I really could have stayed all day here. As it was, I think I exposed my lily-white, ahem, midsection to more sun than it has seen in at least a decade.


Seriously, my skin is the exact same color as the sand. Natural camouflage! And this is not the whitest I have been, believe it or not; I spent time by the pool every weekend for a month before we left trying to get some sort of "base tan."

After a relaxing day at the beach, we watched an excellent island dance performance.



We ended the day with dinner at Keoki's Paradise, which was really nice - lovely setting, good food (Jerry absolutely loved his fish, and my Khalua Colada was awesome), and a truly phenomenal waitress.