Kauai Trip August 2015 Day 3

Waimea Canyon
Today we concentrated on the West shores Waimea Canyon and the south shores.

Waimea Canyon - Grand Canyon of the Pacific

Even though it's only a short distance away from the north shores, Waimea Canyon and Ko'ee statepark is only accessible via the south side. So we woke up early to drive 2 hours around the island to get to the state park at 10am.



We managed to get a good view of the Waimea Canyon before the clouds rolled in.
(note to self : Waimea Canyon is a place that you plan your trip around the weather it offers)

We were unable to get a good view of the Kalalau lookout and Pihea lookout by the time we got to those look out in 30 mins.
We also hike Pihea trail and was not able to see anything except white fluffy clouds. It's a little disappointing but once again, reminded me on how fickle the weather is, on Hawaii Islands.

Pihea trail is our first hiking in Kauai and our first experience with the red soil here. It's every bit as tenacious as everyone said.
https://www.hawaii-aloha.com/blog/2012/08/13/whats-up-with-kauais-red-dirt/

Also, with the rain last week, the trail is muddy!

The muddy trails

The muddy rocks that we climb up

It got a little scary into the trail climbing slippery rocks with muddy shoes. I learned that trees are our friends in that hike. Their roots provided traction and their trunks provided support/leverage through the hike! We had to clean our shoes and clothes in the washing machine after the hike.

We went back to Waimea Canyon on the last day before we flew off.
Woke up at 430am to get there by 715am and caught a glimpse of the Kalalau trail before the fog took over again. It's not easy to catch a glimpse of the trails unless you time the weather really well and of course, cooperation of the weather.
What we saw was breath taking though..

View of the Kalalau trail

The moon was still up when we got there

Saw more of the Canyon view as the fog was less thick this time

Kauai Coffee
After hiking, we high tail our of rainy Waimea Canyon and headed for coffee tasting, rum tasting and mead tasting.

The Kauai coffee is single source brand and offers an impressive free tasting room.

Koloa Rum
The rum tasting is free too, complete with passion fruit liquor mix with rum and rum cake.

The mead tasting is interesting as I never had mead before. It tasted similar to white wine with a nose of honey.
After the long day, we did a home cooked Costco steak dinner at home and call it a day!