A day in the life: Day 1 on Kauai

We just got back on Tuesday from our 4 day trip to Kauai, which I had really been looking forward to. BUT, the trip didn't go exactly as I had planned between clouds, rain, closed attractions and water covered roads. I still had a good time though, I imagine it would be even more fun in the sun!

We picked up our rental car and managed to get a Jeep Wrangler, sweet! Dan cashed in his frequent renter days and so we got to pick any car on the lot. It was fun to be in a Jeep again, made me miss my old Jeep...

We headed to Waimea Canyon from the airport, I knew I would like a chance to explore a little bit there and the weather forecast was predicting the rain moving in. So we headed up the mountain to get to the good viewpoints looking into the canyon. Of course, as we went up, up, up we headed straight into the clouds. Not good for viewing the canyon! Here was our view from the first lookout...

Here is what Waimea Canyon looks like on a clear day (a pic I Googled)

Bummer! But, the kids loved the chickens! Kauai is FULL of chickens. I'm sure there are more feral chickens than people on Kauai. Cole loved chasing them and Adam ran from them.

Why does Kauai have so many chickens? Some say it is from chicken farms being destroyed in Hurricane Iniki, others say it is just from the sugarcane workers in the early 1900s whose chickens escaped and multiplied. So who knows! But there are no mongoose on Kauai, so not much to control the population. I didn't see that many feral cats either (maybe all the chickens ganged up on them). The kids had fun with them though.

As we were driving around, Dan spotted a 4x4 only road, so we had to take it. We headed down a dirt path with the Jeep and found a short hiking trail that we followed. I'm glad we did because it gave us our only view of the canyon for the day.