Day One: Guinness, NO!

I love to hike anywhere. David likes to hike to a destination, like a waterfall. Fortunately for us, Kauai has lots of waterfalls. Unfortunately for me, that usually involves hiking down. Unfortunately for Dave, what goes down, must come up.

This was a nice little hike (about 6 miles round trip) with some interesting adventures along the way. First we encountered... Wild chickens. There were chickens everywhere on Kauai. Apparently several years ago there was a hurricane that destroyed many of the chicken coops on the island. And since there aren't really any predators (meaning NO SNAKES), the chickens multiplied and filled the island.

Continuing on the hike, we encountered... A fallen cherry tree! Yep, you read that right. A cherry tree. We could see the path through the mess, so up and over the tree we went.

Just a few hundred yards up from the tree, we met Guinness and his owner, and Guinness's pack. The guy was a local who was out picking something. Guinness was his big American bulldog cross and his buddies looked like pit bull crosses of some sort. There are no pictures of Guiness because after he tried to bite David's hand off, we moved away carefully, but quickly.

Next, we made it to the ridge. It was pretty cool to look out over the Waimea Canyon.

Finally, we made it to the pretty waterfall (where we learned how to use the automatic timer on our camera so we could take pictures together).

Time down to waterfall: 1 hr 10 min.

Time at waterfall: 25 min.

Time up and back to car: 40 min.

After returning to the car, we drove back down the canyon and had a discussion about "not making this a Rattlesnake Canyon experience and grounds for divorce". Meaning, Dave, Watch.The.Road. and not the scenery while driving, please.

Making it successfully down the canyon, we ate at the yummy Shrimp Station and then went to see Spouting Horn. From there it was snorkeling at Poipu State Park. It was a very full day.