OK, here's a trip from over a year ago....prose style. I found it in an old email... I wrote it to help remember the trip and to share it with my family and friends. here you go....

"Hey, went on a little jaunt to Kauai... here's the details. Really long story.

We had a few rare days off together, so Denise found a deal on a trip to Kauai (one of the islands of Hawaii).

What an incredible time, we didn't want to come back.

Here's a glimpse.....

We rushed around the morning we left, our flight was at 9:40am and Iworked the previous evening, getting off at 7:20am or so.

The airport's not far, but traffic on the main artery through Seattle is notorious during the rush hours, and we knew that we'd probably be "randomly" selected to be searched at the airport. We always are, as the computer flags us often for some reason.

I-5's commuter lane was moving along well, we got to the terminal in plenty of time. Parked, and went to the terminal. Used the E-check-in, it printed our boarding passes in under a minute. Got in line to walk through the metal detector, the security officer pulled the family behind us aside to get searched.

Yeah!! Home free. We packed light, just carry on luggage.

The flight to San Francisco to catch our connecting flight was uneventful, except for the sight of all the big mountain peaks stretching through the morning haze, lined up along the coast...Baker, Rainier, Adams, Helens (still looks lopsided), Even Hood was there, bathed in soft pink. Very surreal, yet majestic.

Coast to Kauai is 5 hours, they play a game onboard called, "Halfway to Hawaii", where if your guess as to what time we're exactly halfway, you win a bottle of wine. Good timewaster, but I was too busy trying to get some sleep. We'd ended up in a three-seat row with only the two of us, so I stretched (like you can stretch out in the back rows) along the seats as best I could and actually got a little sleep.

Awoke to a little girl behind us trying to say "aloha" as we descended toward the Island. Each attempt was louder and further from the last. "Aloudrah"..."Wahaloaha"..."Wahalo"... Most of the plane was giggling.

The island comes up to meet you out of the featureless Pacific, the flat coastal plains contrasting starkly with the almost vertical,sharply angular, spectacularly steep and high mountainsides. They're covered in greenery, but this does nothing to soften the jagged look.

We land, and finally feel the rush of moist, hot air as the terminal doors open. Reminded me of Florida, the scent nonspecific butundeniably green tropic. As we made our way to the conglomeration of car rental places, we searched our paperwork to see what rental place Orbitz had sent us to. Great. Not on any of the paperwork. Pull out the cell....no service. Our phone's digital only. We find a phone booth (soon to be extinct?), and call the 1-800 number. Over an hour later, no one can tell us where our reservation is so we simply rent a car from Hertz. The counter lady takes pity on us and gives us an upgrade.. a mustang convertible for compact price.

Stay tuned for our "fight with Orbitz" fun.

There's only one main road all around the island, takes 2 hours to drive from one end to the other. Poipu (the town we're staying in),is halfway.

We arrive at the Hotel, Denise's hair well knotted from the wind.Only took one wrong turn. Ended up on a dirt road. For future reference, doing a 180 with the parking brake on Kauai at 30mph in a convertible guarantees you’ll get the famous Red Dirt in your eyes,in the car, in your hair, etc. I’ve never seen such a huge dustcloud, and it all settled right on us….anyway, back to the hotel arrival…

The concierge says... ,”leave your car where it is, go inside right now”. It was Mai Tai hour, you see. Free Mai Tai's everyday from 5 to 6. By the way, Kauaii's three hours ahead of the west coast, so no sleep and jetlag were quickly creeping up on me.

We go to our room , it overlooks the ocean and the setting sun. The Sheraton's built on a spit of lava that juts out into Poipu Bay, so there's two sides that get the oceanview. What's neat about the spot is that it gets waves from two different directions making landfall right on the point. Kind of weird , seeing waves come in at 90degrees to each other and erupt in surf.

There's three restaurants on site, we check out the steak/seafood one. Full belly, Full day. Goodnight.

We awaken to some alarm and a loudspeaker monotonically urging us to do something, but we can't make out what he's saying. It's 6 am, I go out, nothing is burning, no tidal wave, tornado, or hurricane, so we ignore the voices.

But we're up.

According to our book, “ the Ultimate Kauai Guidebook” (Highly recommended), the best short coastline hike’s only a few miles away.

It’s called the Broken beach, a jagged and porous cliff edge of black lava, cracked and creased in all directions. Good fishing,apparently. We walked, but Denise was in flipflops, which had no toe protection and the rocks were so sharp the soles were getting cut up by the jagged edges.

We headed back to the car, and as we got closer, saw that the whitepaint had a haze of red dust all over it. This is persistent dirt.

We continued down the dirt road, to an old sugarcane mill. It looked and felt like a movie set, huge machinery and buildings being eaten by the advancing jungle, rusted equipment looking sullen and vaguely menacing. Kind of creepy, even mid-morning. (We later met a woman whosays there’s regular “theme parties” there so we’re not the only ones who think that way.)

Took some pics, then moved along. Our goal was the end of the road on the north west side, The Na Pali coast. We ended up at a missile range instead. The U.S. military installment “Barking Sands” is here. There’s lonely roads stretching along the coast, up to the steep rock cliffs, where there’s ominous looking bunkerlike concrete structures huddled at the bottom, all razor wired in, huge vents and machinery jutting unexpectedly from the ground here and there. Odd, as there was absolutely no one around. No vehicles, no personnel, just locked gates.

We turn around, and start climbing. The road turns inward, switchbacking up the uneven hills. It’s a small two lane, no shoulder. 15 - 30 mph. The views are exquisite. Looking back, you can see the beach, the coastline, several little towns, and another island across the way.

Continuing to climb, we reach the national park. Waimea canyon is a huge cleft through Kauai, the reason there’s no road encircling the island. Scale is lost here, helicopters fly thousands of feet below us, looking like white specks. Waterfalls crash down distant cliff edges, they look like trickles but must be torrents simply due to the fact they’re visible at all.

The road continues past the park, where it turns to simply a paved path. No painted line, no signs. Almost big enough for two cars to cross paths. Vegetation encroaching on the passenger side, I would often hit the sideview and antenna with passing shrubbery. As we pass several openings in the lush roadside greenery, we realize that itfollows a canyon ridge. No guardrails, no warning. It’s a LONG waydown. Unnerving for us spoonfed pseudoamericans.

The road ends. We park and walk to a large lawn, with a steel guardrail visible along the far side. Wow. We’re looking 3-4 thousand feet down a canyon, a jagged corridor whose sawtooth sides march down to meet the ocean. Beautiful. Three waterfalls are visible, the ocean is at least four brilliant and distinct colors of blue and green. A 60 foot power cat cruises by way down there, a speck trailing a white wake a few millimeters long. Helicopters are also tiny specks, easily mistaken for birds, or barely discernable among the valleys and ridges.

There’s a footpath beaten around the guardrail, we explore. Finding several trails, we explore along the rim. We meet a photographer and his family at a makeshift lookoff, simply a small opening in the vegetation where you can stand literally on the edge. Falling equals death. Even I’m a little vertiginous. We get some shots, then return to the clearing.

We find another footpath to the right of the clearing, and another spectacular view, unobstructed by anything but thin air. Looking down, we notice a seven inch high gold and wooden cross embedded in the ground a few inches from the edge, with a freshly-made lei draped around it. Sobering. Kauai is very much a “ take responsibility for your own actions” kind of place. We were never told where to go or what to do by anyone, we were essentially on our own. No police, nosecurity, no safety officers.

All we suffered was some scratches from the ferns lining the trail.

The vegetation is subtly familiar, but just not quite right. Think of a fern. One big stem, one big leaf, which is made up of littler leaves, right? Soft and squishy. Not here. The staghorn fern bifurcates at every little leaf base, so while the general shape is similar, it’s stem is bent and jointed and scratchy.

Flowers that come out of pods and hang straight down on a pink stalk. Pink and yellow flowers in the same cluster. On the same plant. Huge shade trees, massive banyan trees.

Cacti and Grasses.

Thankfully, there’s lots of pull-off areas to park and rubberneck and generally be a goofy tourist. Locals use the “hang loose” sign a lot, the “phone call” hand position waggled slowly back and forth.

Coming down the mountain, we stopped a lot as the road follows a river valley out of the canyon. The famous red dirt was everywhere, a brilliant top layer on the black and gray ash and lava foundation. Mountainbike tracks had me wistfully looking out over the vast expanses, but there was no time, and no space for two bikes and gear.

Getting hungry. Stopped at a place called Toi’s Thai on a friend’s recommendation, but it was already closed. Went instead to Grind’s café, a combo bakery/restaurant. Good simple food. I tried wahoo, a dense sportfish, which is “ono” in hawaiin. Apparently,“ono” also can mean “delicious” and I concur.

Despite our best efforts and 45 sunblock, I felt the telltale warmth on the back of my neck as we left. There are downsides to convertibles in the tropics. The top went up for a little while. Power tops are nice. Push the button. Done. Another push button Iliked was the “disengage traction control” right on the dash. Hey,it’s a rental.

P.S. never buy a used rental car, especially a white mustang convertible.

We had some daylight left, we rolled back through Poipu, looking for the famous “Fantasy Island” waterfalls. Found them no problem. Nice. Three streams of water tumble 170 feet down into a gorge.Thanks to the trusty guidebook, we backtrack along the road and find the primitive trail down. It’s steep. Greasy, rocky, rooty. We arrive at the bottom, all alone. We can see the heads of the people far above. I decide to see if I can get under the water, and scramble along the pool’s edge.

Getting near, the spray blinds me,the pounding pressure waves hit my chest, it’s great. Primal. I make my way between the two bigger streams and stand there, absolutely surrounded by water, barely able to breathe. I like Kauai.Cool water on sunburned skin.

We arrive back at the hotel in time for Mai Tai hour, a quick swim in the warm, wave tossed Pacific,(surprisingly strong undertow), another beautiful sunset, and dinner at the in-house Japanese restaurant.

We walked back to the room along the shore, tiki torches and small lanterns guiding the way, the everpresent onshore breeze providing just the right temperature. The spotlights on the hotel roof subtly lit the more spectacular surf zones, so all you saw was a black ocean with starkly contrasted white foamy surf eruptions with every breaking wave.

Waking early again, we sauntered down to the breakfast buffet. The seating area overlooks the ocean, we watched the surfers bob like seals, waiting for just the right curl.

Fresh fruit, particularly pineapple is never going to be the same anywhere else. Salmon, waffles, eggs any which way, Kona coffee, allsorts of pastry, we felt well prepared for the day.

We had a busy day planned, as this would be the last full day on the island. The convertible’s top came down, we headed off, guidebook in hand.

Our first stop was Spouting Horn, a horizontal lava tube that oceanswells crash into, then are driven 50 feet into the air from the tube’s blowhole. The surf was gentle this morning, so it was pretty but unspectacular. Further down the same sheet of lava, another much larger tube terminated in a 20 foot square opening in the solid rock. Waves swelled and surged through here, apparently it had been a monster blowhole, but the local landowner grew tired of the salt spray stunting his nearby sugarcane crops, and tossed some dynamite in it one day. Or so the story goes.

Roosters are ubiquitous, they’re wild and loud. Kind of odd, as they’re often roadkill…. Mmmm, tastes like chicken.

We hopped back in the car, headed for the north east end of the road. Got to the next town, Lihue (the airport site), before I realized the sunburn was reaching severe proportions. Putting the top up was out of the question, so we stopped at the Red Dirt Shirt shop. Enterprising business, the owners took the hated properties of the island’s fine red dirt, namely that it stained everything it touches, and went into business making shirts and hats stained/dyedby the dirt. The clothes are a distinctive orangey-rusty color.

After outfitting ourselves with dirty baseball caps, and yet another application of sunscreen, we were off again.

We drove. And drove. The road on this side follows the coast, which is notably more rugged and curvy than the west side. Little towns perch on postcard crescent beaches, with point breaks of solid black lava outcrops. The road is the same, a twisty twolane, tight and unmarked. There are multiple small bridges here, the convention is that ALL the cars on one side go, then the other row of cars, etc, as they’re all one lane only.

The road stopped dead 45 miles from the hotel, terminating in a dirt parking lot. The parking overflowed into a nearby forested area, cars jumbled and packed tight under the rough ground of the rocky, rooted forest floor.

Kee’s beach was visible through the trees, a widestrip of white sand beconing us. I drove around under the canopy with inches to spare, feeling the bottom of the car grind and scrape along the bigger bumps. Don’t buy a used white mustang convertible in Kauai.

As we weren’t in a beach mood, we drove back on the main road a few kilometers to the first cave, a huge gas bubble in the lava that broke and cooled the interior when it surfaced, leaving a huge spherical space in the rock.

This particular one was wet, it hadfilled with water seeping from the porous rock above. The water felt slimy and was discolored, probably a result of being directly beside the road.

I’d been intrigued with the guide book’s description of the “Blue Room”, a chamber within a wet cave nearby that was lit entirely byfiltered sunlight, giving everything a deep blue shimmering appearance. The directions were vague, but we found it first attempt,climbing an old trail up to a cliff face. The cave opening was an enormous mouth at the bottom of the cliff, the pool of water far below accessible only by scrambling down the scree slope of rocks.

Reaching the bottom, we stood at the water’s edge, unsure of the direction to swim. The book mentions a triangular opening you have to swim through, so we set off to find it. The water here was a treat.It had a very high replacement rate, because as soon as you muddied it, it would clear as you watched, flowing downward through the spongey rock, and just as quickly being replaced unseen from above.It was crystal clear, and cool. After swimming around for a while, we swam under an overhanging ledge. I turned to look back at the“shoreline” we’d come from, and saw it. The surrounding rock was glowing with shimmery blue light. This was it. Wow. The water depth was unknowable, but if you extrapolated the chamber, assuming a roughly spherical shape, there was a few hundred feet of water under us, as we were swimming near the top of the bubble. Surreal.

We got back up to the mouth of the cave, blinking in the sunlight. A massive banyan tree clung to the sheer rock of the cliff face, it’s multitude of rootlike trunks wrapping the rock. Life finds a way.

We arrived back at the car, reapplied the requisite sunscreen, and off we went again.
At Tunnel’s beach we went inside another cave, this one was directly beside the road and dry, filled with sand from the nearby beach. The highest point was only 30 feet overhead, but from that central point you could tell you were inside a massive bubble, as the roof radiated down in a spherical fashion. The sand floor met the walls at easily a diameter of 300 feet, the true scale of the chamber is tough to get your head around. Easily 1000 foot diameter, or a bubble capable of holding a ten story building.

The beach area is bordered by this cave, a sheer cliff wall rising from it’s mouth. This cliff frames a tiny expanse of green lawn,and then the beach, with it’s huge dunes of golden sand take over.There’s vendors here, you can buy a coconut out of the back of an ancient pickup truck, and watch as the dude trims it with an overgrown butchers knife with a few deft chops, exposing the milk filled inside. In goes a straw, you’ve got a ready made tropical drink.

Another truck sells the lauded “shave ice”. Not much more than a sno-cone, in our opinion. We buy bags of home dried fruit from another truck, the dried coconut sugared shavings were really good.

We stop just down the road, as the pavement curves out onto a point where you can see an entire expanse of crescent beach curving away from you, kite surfers catching air. Jetski’s are outlawed here,it’s a nice quiet vista.

At our feet, black crabs scuttle sideways faster than I’ve ever seen crabs move, their black bodies perfect camo among the jagged midnight black lava.

We drive toward the interior of the island, I’m trying to get as close as possible to the crater. It’s the wettest spot on earth here, the moisture rich clouds climbing the sides of the dome, forced to dump their water as the air cools. There’s a huge swamp at the top of the mountain, fuelled by this constant rain. Or so I’m told.You can’t get there except by helicopter. The top was obscured with heavy cloud all the time we were there, so the theory’s sound in my mind.

As to the soundness of my mind, however, well, that’s between me and all the other voices in my head.

The road again ends without ado. We turn around, drive back toward the coast. We pass another waterfall, huge, but the distance and scale issues chip at the grandeur.
We talk about hiking the trails, the unused and all but forgotten water tunnels linking valleys, blasted by sugarcane owners in the all important need to water their crops. No time. The guidebook intriguesus with the descriptions, teasing us for only staying a few days.

We have one more stop planned. We follow the guidebook’s directions through an upscale golf course suburb area, find a dirt parking area with a path leading toward shore.

We follow the path, breathing in the citrusy scent of the overheadgreenish/yellow fruit that permeates everywhere. Guava fruit trees are ripe. We reach the coast, stretched out before us is a moonscape of black lava. We hop from rock to rock, the surf crashing twenty feet below. We reach the end of the “trail”, there it is.

Queen Anne’s Bath. A roughly swimming pool sized natural cutout in the rock, full of seawater that gushes through with every wave. It’s a popular spot, snorkelers and swimmers dot the surface. The water’s just right.

We play here for a bit, then head back, taking shelter under a tree from a sudden but short lived intense rainstorm. Apparently is par for the course here, a gift from the mountain.

We pick some guava, it’s sweet and sour at the same time, full of seeds. We make it back to the hotel after filling the car (2.22/gallon for reg.) just in time for dinner, Italian this time, and another tropical sunset.

Our last day.

We awaken to the sound of surf crashing outside, sunlight streaming through the curtains. We shuffle down to our last meal, the excellent breakfast buffet. We sit on the patio, watching the surfers play in the morning swells.

We're not looking forward to a 5 hour trip boxed in those tiny seats,we call to see if we can upgrade. the woman tells us to arrive early at the terminal, sometimes there's something that can be done at the gate.

We pack, slowly. It's going to be tough leaving here after such a little taste...

I use the tv to automatically settle our bill and check out. We packup the car, and enjoy one last run with the top down. We drop off the filthy car at Hertz, arrive via shuttle just as the ticket counter opens. The woman's understanding, but laughs when she hears what the phone lady told us. She does give us the emerg. exit row (morelegroom) and upgrades us to economy-plus for the long flight over the Pacific gratis, as we'd shown up extra-early.

Uneventful flight, save the sunset at 30000 feet. Incredible... bright crimson overlaid with an almost ultraviolet purple, fading to midnight blue. Since we were racing away, it was short lived, but that only made it more beautiful, a fleeting glimpse.

For my Valk compatriots, I saw two valkyries on the island, both standards. The roads are built for them... few police, long straight stretches along the highway coupled with excellent twisty bits on the very coast and in the mountains.

We touch down at 1:30 am, an hour late. Denise works in 4 hours. We walk to the car, again thankful not to have to wait for baggage, pay the parking fees via automated teller on the way out.

It's awfully nice to drive our own car. It's smoother, more powerful,handles better than the ponderous mustang. Don't get me wrong, convertible is nice, but the ford's not a car I'd buy. I'd truly rather have a Civic... or the Honda convertible S2000, if you're asking.

I definately would not buy a used white mustang convertible on Kauai.

Riley, our little Bichon, is one happy dog. Our petsitter Lynn did a great job, but he was a spaz for half an hour after we got home, tearing around, jumping, throwing his toys.

We have a huge amount of pictures, but want quality developping, as we were warned that most photolabs can't capture the color palette found in Kauai. We'll send the better ones out when we get them back.

Finally, Check out WWW.Wizardpub.com if you're going to Hawaii. The guidebooks are highly recommended, the authors live on the island they're reviewing and go do the tourist stuff, but don't tell the companies that they're being evaluated. The result is a true guide of how services rate and there's a huge amout of " off the beaten path " things to do. It made our whirlwind tour you just read about possible.

Hope you liked our novella."