Since I had driven so much the day before, we both thought it would be good to stay fairly close to home on Tuesday.  One of the mountains here, Nou Nou or Sleeping Giant, has several hiking trails and it is only 30 minutes from Princeville.  To us, this seemed like a good plan.  We got going fairly early and left our condo around 6:30.  After a quick pit stop, we made it to the trailhead just outside of Kapaa right as the sun was beginning to come up.

Pulling into the parking lot, I was encouraged as we were one of 4 cars in the lot at that time.  So we began our ascent.  Up we went.  Each turn brought new vistas of Kapaa below as well as the Wailua River.  We chose to tackle the East Trail for we believed that might provide good sunrise views.  We were not wrong.  The trail to the top was 1.75 miles long and was not that challenging.  Steadily climbing the equivalent of 100 flights of stairs does tend to wind someone but the trail itself was not bad.  Upon reaching the summit we had a quick snack and made sure to take a picture of the “End of Trail” sign.  The summit began to get a bit crowded while we were there.  Families, people with dogs, and an extremely chatty older man from Minnesota joined us at the top.  Still, though, the views were incredible.  We took the same path down (much easier than up) and stopped for lots of photos.  We had to pause several times on the way down to let people coming up pass and it started to feel crowded.  Upon returning to the car, we noticed that now we were one of about 25 cars in the lot.  For Kauai, that constitutes a crowd.

Climbing mountains does tend to cause one to get hungry.  With Kapaa being so close it only made since to go there for an early lunch.  We ducked into a few shops while waiting for 11am.  Pretty soon after 11 we were back at Chicken in a Barrel.  Today, we split the chicken for two lunch plate, and I had them throw a couple of ribs on the plate.  Again, very tasty.  As today, was the day of limited driving, we pointed the car back north with the intentions of hitting a few beaches.  We popped over to Anahola Beach Park for a bit.  This beach was almost empty of people.  I think I counted around 10 on the entire expanse of beach.  The water was too rough to enter and the coral on the bottom would’ve made for tough going.  There were some folks camping there and the view they had was spectacular.

Once we had our fill of Anahola, we drove to Secret Beach.  Secret Beach is off of the main road, down an unpaved dirt road.  Then you park and you walk about .75 miles downhill to get to the beach.  When you get to the beach, you really have your choice of spots.  We spent the entire afternoon on the beach and never were within 200 yards of the closest people.  Surfers would walk by occasionally, but for the most part, we were undisturbed by anyone or anything.  The waves were fairly big and loud.  Couple that with the steady breeze and the shade we had, the afternoon was just about perfect.  It passed quickly and soon enough, it was time to head home.  The only downside to going downhill one way, is that it is uphill the other.  But no matter, we made it back to the car and drove home.

A quick dinner tonight and some lounging around brought the day to an end.  The time here is going quickly.  I kind of wish my last few days here would slow down just a bit…