Once again, my day started extremely early. Ryan and Jack were wide awake before the sun came up, so I threw on some clothes and we headed out the lanai door with a plan to walk along the beach. It was cloudy and started to rain on us, so we only made it as far as the lagoon and sheltered in one of the covered poolside chairs. They normally rent for $70/day but at 6:30 am there wasn't a big demand for them!
After getting muffins and enduring the windstorm blowing through the lobby (and the incredibly brave - and annoying - birds charging in for crumbs) we started back to the room. We ran into Sam coming to find us - amazingly, he hadn't heard us leave and was surprised to wake up to an empty room.
We had brought some food from the rental house and Sam made oatmeal with hot water from the coffee maker; the boys enjoyed breakfast #2 on the lanai while I showered and changed. On every previous visit to Kauai we have stayed on the South Shore, so I didn't have a huge list of things we just had to see or do. As much as the pool was calling to us again, I realized there was a geocache less than a 1/2 mile from our hotel on the Maha'ulepu coastline, so we herded the kids out the door (Chelsea and Lance went out for breakfast before going ziplining with Kauai ATV).
We hike often in Colorado, but you would have thought I was forcing my children to walk barefoot across hot coals the way they were whining and carrying on. I have a geocaching app with a compass on my phone that counts down the distance to the cache's coordinates so they perked up once I told them we were close to the "treasure."
The app only gets us within 16 feet, so once we got to the general area we had to poke around a bit. Usually Sam has the "geo sense" to home in on the find right away, but this one required a little more exploration and I nabbed it. We let the boys select a treasure (future rockstar Ryan was over the moon to find a guitar pick and Jack chose a plastic seahorse) and then left some trinkets for the next treasure hunters.
It was still only a little after 9 am but it was getting hot so we went back to the hotel. We walked past the pool to get to our room and I had a brief thought that we should just stay put by the pool, but we had already talked up going to Baby Beach to the boys - as the name suggests, it's supposed to be great for kids. We packed up the beach paraphernalia and set out on another hike through the hotel to the parking lot.
Baby Beach was indeed a great place for kids - and it was practically deserted. Of course it clouded up and started raining as soon as we had unloaded the car - but that didn't stop the boys from charging into the water with their kickboards.
Eventually the rain stopped and the sun came out. Let's just take a moment and enjoy this idyllic scene, shall we?
We hadn't brought enough snacks, so eventually we had to pack up and seek out lunch. We drove into Koloa with a plan to get a plate lunch at Sueoka's, but the snack shop is closed on Mondays, so we just picked up some poke, cheese sticks and a tuna sandwich and walked over to the park for a quick picnic. After that we browsed some shops, but the boys were getting tired after our big morning activities.
Of course they both fell asleep as soon as we got in the car, but I wanted to give them a good long nap so headed west toward Waimea. Unfortunately, the drive was also making ME (the driver) tired, so we turned back toward the hotel. They played possum as we carried them back to the room (quite the heavy load - oof!) but were wide awake as soon as we attempted to lay them down. That left us with no other choice but to go back to the pool!
We repeated yesterday's pattern of splashing, lounging, soaking, drinking and snacking (I ordered the hummus plate from the poolside restaurant - YUM). Ryan had gradually been getting more confident in the water without his snorkel mask, and today he asked Sam to throw him up and into the water repeatedly.
This is my favorite photo of the entire trip:
Yes, he landed flat on his back, which made us cringe, but he came up smiling and clamoring for more.
After a while the children realized it had been at least 20 minutes since they last ate, so of course they were starving. We had originally planned to attend Smith's luau, but the thought of getting cleaned up and driving to Wailua made it a less-desirable option at that point.
Chelsea and Lance stopped at Kalapaki Joe's in Poipu on their way back from ziplining, so we decided to just go up to Seaview Terrace. I was very impressed with the kids' menu and my slider trio was amazing, but Sam was underwhelmed by his chicken caesar salad.
Ryan was enthralled when the guitarist started playing - he was incredibly talented and we moved over to the stage-front seating to enjoy more of his performance after we finished eating.
Finally it was time to head back to the room, bringing our last full day on the island to an end.
