Hiking Kauai

The majority of our time in Hawaii was spent in and around the ocean.  However, Hawaii also has pretty fantastic mountains, so we had to do a bit of hiking.

Kauai has a massive canyon called Waimea Canyon.  It is affectionately called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.

Naturally, we couldn't go to Kauai without exploring some of that massive canyon.

The first thing we did was head to the Waimea Canyon overlook.  This part didn't require any hiking.  (Well, it was about a 30 foot climb from the parking lot to the overlook.  I'll let you decide if that is hiking.)

But it had some great views of the canyon.

Selfies with a canyon are the best kind of selfies.

I had to do a panoramic shot, obviously.

After the overlook we headed to the Canyon trail. This trail ends at a massive waterfall, but we were more about the overlooks and views of the canyon.

This hike was a little bit different than your normal hike.  Usually, you're starting at the bottom of a mountain and climbing up.  We were climbing down into the canyon, so we were hiking downward.  As we got lower, we got more into a jungle setting.

Isn't she cute in the jungle?

It was raining on and off while we hiked.  Robyn liked to stop and enjoy the rain on her face.

There were some ancient carvings made by the ancestors of Steve Jobs.

The trail kept going down, and we were starting to get nervous about how difficult the climb back out would be.  I think we were probably pretty close to the waterfall, but when we got to this view below, we decided that would be a good destination and turned around.

My watch said we did about 4 miles round trip, and we climbed around 1000 feet.  That climb on the way back was plenty to get us good and tired.

Also on the way back we got to have a good discussion about parenting.  There was a mom who was terrified of heights and was really struggling.  She was doing her very best to convince their child that he should be terrified.  The dad was getting cranky about it and making the whole situation worse.

We like to be hypothetical parents, because in hypothetical situations we handle everything perfectly.  In this hypothetical situation, neither of us fed our children a phobia, and neither of us got cranky.  It was great.

This excursion ended up being our only hiking on this trip.  We had planned on hiking the Na Pali coast, but our legs were a little sore and on the day we had planned to hike, we just decided it would be more fun to spend the day at the beach.  We didn't want to do it just to cross it off a list, so that just means we'll have to go back.  Next time on Kauai:  Hike the Na Pali Coast.