Grand Canyon of the Pacific

Today we got an earlier start, shortly after those roosters started crowing. Did I mention all the chickens on the island? I'm not kidding, they are EVERYwhere. A waitress at a restaurant told us they're tougher than nails to eat, and in fact told us a story of boiling a rock and a chicken, and when the rock was tender, the chicken would only need another 5 minutes. They just wander around the island, clucking and crowing. Enough of the chickens.

We wanted to see the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, Waimea Canyon. You drive to Waimea, and turn right for 18 miles to the end of the road. The canyon is beautiful. Obviously not as big as the Grand Canyon, but it is still pretty impressive.

And that's the river down there. It's 3,400 feet above sea level where we're standing, and the river is probably pretty close to sea level, so that's the distance to the river (about 1,021 metres for you metric people out there).

Gerard at the lookout.

And this waterfall on one of the walls in the canyon.

So then, we thought we'd head out to the end where you can look over the Kalalau Trail (the same place where we hiked on the north shore, but this is the other end of the 11-mile hike). We did that...

And even out a tad further to the Pu'u o Kila Lookout looking at the Kalalau Valley.

We decided to do some hiking, and perhaps even to the Alaka'i Swamp where there's a boardwalk across the swamp. But to get there, we had to walk the Pihea Trail for 1.7 miles. We made it 1 mile, and it was crazy! I guess it was going to improve, but someone told us it was more of the same. Well then, we did well to make it this far!

This was the easy part.

Yeah, those are footprints in the mud. And mine was one of them...not this particular spot, but one of many others after it! Yuck!

We came back, I washed my feet in the sink at the washrooms, and we had lunch at a campground/park area, where we saw...did I tell you about the chickens? And this little guy as well.

After lunch, we headed down to the town of Waimea to get some shaved ice at Jo-Jo's Clubhouse on the highway. It's different, and is a big treat here. Essentially, it's ice that's shaved in pieces vs crushed. Although, ours was more like crushed. Then they add whatever kind of flavours you want, and they put ice cream on the bottom, and then you eat it with a spoon.

We then stopped at the Kauai Coffee Visitor Center, mainly to take a picture of a coffee bush. If I have this right, the coffee plant is part of the gardenia family (jasmine, and I don't know what else). So here it is.

The coffee grown in Kauai is not that great. I sampled it at the Visitor Center and I'd be lying if I said I liked it. It had a funny taste, to me.

On the way back to our cottage, we drove up to Wailua Falls. It pours into a pool, then continues on over a few more falls and finally into the ocean.

We returned to our cottage and showered - to get the red dirt off. Then around 7 pm we headed out to Scotty's Beachside BBQ where we had a sampler for 2. Sorry, by the time I took the picture, we had already eaten the chicken, and some of the other things (pulled pork, beef brisket and ribs).

Every table in this restaurant has an unobstructed view of the ocean. The sun was down, but it was still light enough to get a decent shot.

The end of a great day!