This morning I woke up early and saw some pretty cloud patterns so I decided to grab a bit of my camera gear and head down to the beach for some sunrise photos. I walked down the path to the northern edge of the property where a stone jetty protects a waterway, there are usually some nice exposed rocks and logs that make interesting subjects. I found a spot, and after finding a good spot for my cup of coffee and setting up my tripod, monkeying with the settings and adding my ND filters for long exposures, I realized I left my remote control in the room. *sigh* I'm just not concentrating as much as I would like to be on this trip. I was gaining light too quickly and really wanted the long exposures before the sun rose, so I just tried to keep a steady hand while depressing the shutter.
Once the sun came up, I switched to a regular polarizing filter and had some fun with the sun's reflections
We weren't sure what exactly we might end up doing this day. The lighthouse was still closed, and we looked into a hike called the Koa Kia trail, which is a pretty flat 5 mile loop through a mahogany forest to a garden with a stone damn. Unfortunately, according to some very recent Trip Advisor reviews, the trail was entirely socked in with mud from the recent rains and incredibly unpleasant walking. Knowing the geography of that area, I had a feeling it wouldn't be anything but a bog, and we didn't want to slog through it. D suggested we head north to Ke'e and see how the Kalalau trail looked. We left all the beach stuff in the car as well, so that if the trail looked unappealing we could still try the beach.
We'd had breakfast in the room early, but got a later start getting out the door, and we were all pretty hungry right around 10:30. Since we happened to be passing by Tiki Taco, we decided to stop in for an early lunch.
It is located in a small business looking strip mall, hard to spot if you aren't already looking for it
A lot of Dia de los Muertos artwork inside.
Chickens. Everywhere!
This is one single taco. They are huge... the diced fish is on the bottom, topped with cabbage, pico, and queso fresca (usually also has sour cream, but I don't like it so they left it off) They were a little heavy on the cabbage this time, but the flavors are nice and spicy. For fish, they serve whatever is fresh and in season, on this day it was hebi.
Further up the highway is Small Town Coffee, which has been one of our favorite coffee stops. Besides coffee drinks, they offer a lot of baked goods for breakfast or lunch, most of them are vegan.
We drove all the way up, passing through Hanalei, and then along the meandering highway over several one-lane bridges to get to the end of the road. We stopped off at a little shop in Wainiha for some snacks, the lady working there was incredibly friendly and we had a good long talk about allergies while we poked around at snack options and grabbed some bottled water. Continuing along the road we arrived at the parking near Ke'e just before noon. The place was packed, all along the road cars were pulled off here and there, even parking directly under the "No Parking Any Time" signs. We crawled through the crowds of people hoofing it to and from their cars and wondered if this was going to work out at all... then after we hit the turn-about and started heading back we noticed a family loading stuff into a car. We paused for just a minute, waving the cars behind us around, and the family pulled out of their spot. We managed to park at about the 8th spot over from the trail head... you can hardly ask for better parking than that!
We geared up into our hiking boots and poles, and I lightened my camera case slightly by pulling out my larger, heavier lenses and leaving the Clunky pinhole camera behind. That took quite a a bit of debating on my part, but I've seen enough photos of this trail to know that I was already taking a risk with the 18 or so pounds of gear I had on me. (In hindsight, I would have lightened it up even more, and it would have been more comfortable with my hiking/camera bag combo rather than just a heavy camera case, but that was back home on the mainland, and I had packed without knowing that we would even make an attempt at this trail, so I didn't bring it)
This is pretty much a majority of the trail... slippery red boulders at a steep incline. There are a few places that "flatten out" on a couple of bends, and a few spots where the trail has been improved by using logs to make "stairs". All in all, the incline is about equal to what we've seen on the Wallace Falls hike back home, though this trail is more often inclined than Wallace Falls, and also this one has a severe drop to the ocean on one side, cleverly disguised with tropical foliage. It would be nearly impossible in active rain due to the nature of the mud here, though.
Lots of warning signs at the head of the trail
Lots and lots of warning signs.
G and I on the trail, hopefully this helps illustrate the incline. It is hard to tell, but just to my left was a cliff down to the ocean. G wouldn't get anywhere near that side of the trail, and hugged the cliff the whole time. She did fantastic with the technical nature of the trail, but did not enjoy the vertigo she felt from the view.
The first half mile includes this lovely switchback, D is just one turn of the switchback below me here.
We made it to the half mile mark, which the sign called the "Coast Viewpoint" - some other travelers referred to it as "windy point". The trail curves here and this is where you can get your first glimpse of the Napali Coast. There is a relatively wide ledge and lots of boulders for people to sit on, and it was a decently busy stopping point. I paused to take some photos with the wide-angle pinhole, and also a few attempts at pano shots (since I lugged my tripod all the way up there, I was determined to use it!) I'll have to stitch the panos together when I get on my bigger laptop, for now here are a few regular landscape shots.
From the viewpoint looking back and up, this was the mountain we just hiked around. We happened to be up there at a good time as far as lighting goes.
From the viewpoint looking down... that is the beach where the trail starts - this should give you an indication of the climb... half a mile, basically straight up.
At the turning point of the trail looking down the Napali coast. The lighting was tricky here, but I was determined to get some kind of shot of it.
This is where I sat to take that shot. Yes, the cliff drops straight down. I was terrified and couldn't even put my feet over the other side of the rock.
D played with his 360 camera A LOT up here, I'm having him send me the shots he edited so I can share them all on the blog later.
As we sat up there taking photos, some clouds began to move in. Within about 10 minutes those patches of blue sky above the mountains were entirely flat gray, and the humidity began to climb. I decided we'd gone far enough, especially for an impromptu hike, and I did not want to get caught in the rain with all that gear, so we headed back down. Our descent was slow and steady, and we managed to get down the trail with the least amount of mud on us out of anyone we saw. (to be fair, we were at least prepared with hiking poles and boots, and took it slow. We saw people on that trail who had worn Birkinstocks up and were having to come down barefoot, and a lot of people just wearing gym shoes coming down with streaks of mud from where they'd slipped. Me, I like my ankles in one piece, so I'll always haul the hiking boots out, even if the gym shoes are more padded)
Once back at the car, we decided the clouds were leaning too much towards rain to bother with the beach here, so we packed up and headed back to the condo. G happily got out to the pool for her water time while I cleaned up our hiking gear so it could dry well enough before we'd have to pack it up.
Though we showered up, none of us felt like going to a real sit-down restaurant, and we felt we'd earned a little not-so-healthy food, so we drove down the street to Bubba's Burgers. This is a place where you order at the counter and grab a seat where you can... it's a few steps above fast food, in my opinion, but full of casual atmosphere and energy.
While waiting in line I noticed this posted on the wall...
That reminds me, the field from the ATV tour is also where scenes from Tropic Thunder were filmed.
There are tables inside Bubba's, but we like to sit on the bench counter/railing seats outside.
Kind of can't miss the sign while driving by.
They were out of fries ?!? - it had apparently been a record breaking weekend and they still didn't have fries by Monday night. I couldn't eat the onion rings because of my allergies. *sigh* So I had my double bubba and soda, and we went to Safeway on the way back to the room to pick up some chips for me to munch on while we watched movies before bedtime.
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