September 15th

Day 2 of our vacation


My original plan for this day was to take advantage of being on Eastern time and head to the north shore where we would enjoy the early morning, do a little hiking and sightseeing.
This was my girlfriends first trip to Kauai and on this trip I wanted to show her what made me fall in love with this place years ago and why I was a timeshare owner here for years. Now I know two people can look at the same thing and not come to same conclusions but I was hopeful that she would love the island as much as I do. I counted my blessings from the troubled evening. It could have been worse, what if we had arrived with a couple hundred dollars of groceries in the car!!

Due to our issues with check-in on the previous day we did not wake up at 4:00am like normal east coasters would so I decided this would be a lazy morning. This was our first look at our view from the balcony. It's a breathtaking view of a stream running into the ocean and the cove was full of turtles relaxing on the rocks below.

We also got our first true view of our accommodation's in the daylight

I was up at 6:30 so went to Big Save to pick up groceries and on the drive there my phone rang. It was the owner of the house, he asked where we were and I explained to him that we broke into the house using a locksmith. He was very apologetic and explained that the house is in the process of being sold and that they were not planning on renting it anymore. He didn't have a problem with us breaking in, in fact he complimented us on our resourcefulness. He did pay for the locksmith and our dinner at Josselins so in the end it was just a big misunderstanding.
I unpacked the groceries and made the "homemade" version of Hula pie with an Oreo cookie pie shell, chocolate macadamia nut ice cream, caramel and fudge sauce mixed with chopped macadamia nuts and placed the masterpiece back into the fridge.

This morning  I didn't feel much like cooking so we headed to Joe's on the green. Amazing views

 We tried the Macadamia nut pancakes and something called the "Local Joe" which was a mixture of ground beef and eggs. The food was good but nothing special.

Next it was back to the house to get everything in order.
We decided that we were going to do something different so we made a reservation at Kauai Eco Clays to do some target shooting. Now I should explain that we don't do this at home. We read the excellent reviews on trip advisor and decided to give it a try. We literally had a blast. Ben is an excellent instructor and if you follow his directions you will hit the targets. You get 25 shots in a round and I am proud to say that I did hit my last four. Ben makes everything really fun and when you do miss a target he is able to tell you exactly why and tells you how to correct it. This was a really fun activity and very reasonably priced.

Since the shooting range is just down the road from Wailua falls we visited the lookout next. The falls were flowing pretty well. Such a beautiful spot for photos

We had a special dinner planned at the Sheraton so we kind of skipped lunch but we went to old Koloa town and decided to try shave ice. Now I have never had shave ice and I was looking forward to this as I have read so many glowing reviews.
It was hard to choose as there were so many combinations of tropical flavors available. I finally decided on what I thought would work and ordered.

I was presented with a rainbow colored confection that looked yummy. I dipped my spoon into the colorful crystals and raise the spoon to my mouth. As the flavors hit my tongue I am instantly transformed back to my childhood and all those horrible snow cones and flavor Ice push pops. We were given these because ice cream was too expensive. These are not good childhood memories.

My mind races, could this really be that terrible?

I take another spoonful. 

Yes it's that terrible.

It's a snow cone, pure and simple.

I am no snow cone guy, hate them, hated them as a kid and still do. It's an assault on my palate. I give up after just four spoonfuls. Now some might argue that this might not have been the best shave ice but my position would be that no matter what syrup you pour on it's still just flavorless ice drowned in sugary laden syrup. 

No disrespect to those that love shave ice but this boy isn't going down that road ever again.  I will stick with Ice Cream and Gelato which to this boy are worth the calories!

We got ready for our dinner at the Sheraton. They call it a Halelani dinner. They setup a table outside with a nice view of the ocean and they serve you a pre-ordered multi course dinner. The setting was spectacular and our waiter was great.

We started with an Ahi tartare, and beet salad appetizer. Both were well presented and delicious.

Our Entree's were surf and turf. One Rib eye and one Fillet each with half a lobster tail. Both steaks were cooked perfectly as was the lobster.

We then moved on to the sweets. One was a take on bananas Foster with a wonderful sea salt caramel ice cream and the other was a flourless chocolate cake with the same ice cream side. Super tasty but not over the top on the sweetness. We enjoyed the sunset and the flickering of the tiki torches. Laughed about the rocky start to our vacation yesterday and remained hopeful that we had smooth sailing ahead. 

This was a fairly clear night and the brilliance of the Kauai night sky was hampered a bit by the brightness of the moon which had a ring around it which we later learned was a reflection from ice. After a brief stroll to enjoy the night time breezes we headed back to turn in. 

The good news is that our bed is super comfy and you seem to fall off to dream land as soon as your head hits the pillow.

Tomorrow is our first tour of the trip with Kauai Photo Tours, off to dream..