Hawaii Day 2: Who knew there was a Grand Canyon in Hawaii?

Early, very early, the day after we arrived in Honolulu, we set out again to catch a morning flight from Honolulu to the island of Kauai. Kauai is the oldest of the major Hawaiian islands, known as the "Garden Isle" because it so wet and green. Since it is an old island (the volcanoes on it are long dead), it has had lots of time for erosion to make amazing canyons and cliffs. Kauai is less populated (except by chickens--more on that later), slow paced, and spectacularly beautiful.

Once we arrived at the airport (a very open-air building, by the way--kind of strange that birds can fly in and out around the gates!), we picked up our rental car. They told us they were having a manager's special and for $5 a day more, we could upgrade from our compact to a convertible Mustang. We jumped at it, and were glad we did--it definitely made viewing the scenery that much better (at least, when it wasn't raining it did.) We didn't get any photos of our sweet ride, though--sorry.

We set out at once for the Waimea Canyon, which is sometimes called "The Grand Canyon of Hawaii." It really did look a lot like the Grand Canyon, except, well--greener. We drove around these windy roads to the very end of the road, where there is this overlook that is supposed to give a breath-taking view of the Kalalau beach (where we'd be hiking to later on in the trip). However, to the right is all we saw. I even followed the advice I read to get there early in the day before the fog rolled in...ah, well. We decided to take a short nap while we waited to see if the fog would clear (we were still tired from that 4am taxi ride), but alas, it only got worse. A second overlook was a tad better, but not much.

So we gave up on the coast overlooks and decided to get back to the canyon. Along the way, we met many MANY wild chickens. They are everywhere in Kauai (well, all of Hawaii really, but especially Kauai). This becomes a problem at 5am when the roosters start crowing, but actually they didn't bother us too much.

Anyways, we did a short hike (2-3 miles or something) along a ridge, which yielded many amazing views. (It was pretty chilly at first, though--I didn't expect to be wishing for a heavier jacket in Hawaii!) We hiked until we reached a little waterfall, a pool, and then further on a HUUUUGE water fall (which we were at the top of.) You can't see much of it in this first picture, since we were at the top, but later we saw it from an overlook across the way and you could see the whole length of it.

We also stopped and took some pictures at a few drive-up overlooks. Once we were done with those, we decided to start the long-ish drive *all* the way around to the other side of the island (no roads go across the island, only around the outside), where our vacation rental was and where we'd start our backpacking adventure the next day. We reeeeally needed to rest up from that, so we bought some groceries, had a simple dinner, and lazed around until turning in for an early bedtime. (We watched a little Cosby Show on the giant flat screen TV first, though!)

A word about our vacation rentals. I am very proud of the nice places we were able to stay and the work I put into finding them. I may have mentioned this before, but I have learned to really love planning vacations--I love finding awesome places and getting good deals. So I have to talk about these rentals because I spent hours picking the perfect ones. We scored really good prices by using vrbo.com, which I highly recommend. This first place was supposed to be just a studio apartment, but the owner ended up upgrading us to the larger one for free. So we paid just $105 a night (including taxes) for this amazing place with a full kitchen, jetted tub, super comfy bed, loft, outdoor roof patio/sun bed thing--the works! And, the best part was that the owner essentially gave us 3 nights for the price of 2, since we left for our overnight backpacking trip--we stayed there before and after the hike and she didn't charge us for the night in between. Sweet!