The Decompression of a Boomer

Part 3 – Friday, January 21, 2022. Good morning Kauai!

Okay, so our Kauai vacation is totally redeemed with this sunrise after yesterday’s travel day from hell. I want to show you a map of Kauai and specifically the location of Princeville and the north shore, and the route to Princeville from the airport in Lihue (the red line). The drive to Princeville from the airport takes about an hour.

That was the last leg of our trip yesterday, the drive to Princeville from 11pm to midnight after we (luckily?) snagged our rental car. You will see from the map that the roads in Kauai largely lay along it’s perimeter. There’s no cutting across the island to get to the other side! I suspect on this trip we’ll experience most of our adventures near Kauai’s north shore.

So what to do today, our first full day in Kauai?

For someone reading this who might be planning a trip to Kauai, let me just say that our main guidebook over our nine visits has been this one, by Andrew Doughty:

It’s a fantastic guide book. You can also download the “Hawaii Revealed” app by Andrew Doughty that offers a wealth of information about each island, history, sites, beaches (including current surf conditions), activities, restaurants, with recommendations and reviews. He also offers narrated driving tours.

We have driven as far as we can go around the island on previous visits. Hey, we were younger! Our last trip here was three years ago. Our first trip was 10 years ago. David and Victor are both 75 years old now, Stephanie a few years behind, I’m pushing 70, and Eric, well, there’s still a young mountain goat trapped inside his 64-yr-old body. Megan is 33 with some physical limitations so she fits right in!

It’s a beautiful sunny day! Let’s head to Hanalei Bay, on the north shore of Kauai just a few miles west of Princeville. – Home of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ … (FYI, for all you youngins’ under the age of 65). We always walk the beach at Hanalei, cloudy, rainy, windy, or whatever, but I believe the weather today is the sunniest I’ve ever seen it. We walk to the end of the dock and back. Perfect day for surfing!

That Beach Boys ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ tune is dancing in our heads (okay, my head…)

Hey, come on! Post something a little more recognizable to the under-60 crowd!

How about this ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ remastered version featuring Blake Lively on the surf board (yea, that’ll help you get your surf on! …)

I took a video while standing on the dock:

Surf to shore, paddle back out again! 

If everybody had an ocean across the U.S.A.
Then everybody'd be surfing like in Hanalei

After hanging out on the Dock of the Bay we walked the full length of the beach. Megan paused for a photo. Perfect day with just one fluffy cloud in the sky.

Walking back from the far end of the beach

A last view of Hanalei Bay

Time to hit our favorite lunch spot in Hanalei, the Kalypso. Good news, the Kalypso survived through the COVID-19 shutdown over the past two years. Bad news, they open at 3 PM now on weekdays because of a shortage of employees. Yep, that sounds about right. Typical new normal for restaurants. However on Saturdays they open at 11. We make it to the Kalypso for lunch at least twice, to burn up the $300.00 gift card Eric had bought for Steph and Vic. (While we gave them a measly wooden sign with a cow on it?)

In that case, let’s order Inikis!

The restaurant is practically outdoors as one whole wall is open with outdoor seating. To comply with the indoor mask mandate put on your mask before you enter any restaurant and wear it till you get to your table. Take it off once you are seated. Put it back on at your table after you finish eating and wear it as you leave the restaurant. Take it off when you get outside. It gets quite complicated. Like, you may not realize when you leave an outdoor restaurant that you are indeed outdoors and can now take your mask off. But if you find yourself crossing the street then you are likely outside and others in your party might cue you that it is now safe to take your mask off. Unless, of course, you wish to keep it on.

There’s a nice shopping plaza in the area behind the Kalypso with lots of small shops. We stopped to look at bathing suits hanging on a rack outside. Huh, based on the styles I saw on the beach today, I could use an upgrade. What do you think?

Now all I need is a surf board!

So what do you suppose we’ll be doing tomorrow?

Tags: Hanalei Bay, Kalypso Restaurant in Hanalei

This entry was posted on February 10, 2022 at 12:08 am and is filed under Kauai. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.