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Hawaii Trip

Day 8 of 14

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Wednesday, July 4th
Fly to Kauai, Fireworks

This morning we had to get up early for a morning flight to Kawaii. We were up at 6am and out the door by 7:30am. It hadn't rained during the morning up until then, but it did rain on the drive back. There wasn't much traffic, as it was so early in the morning, but there was increasing traffic later in the morning, coming from the opposite direction.

One car sped up behind me while it was raining (without headlights on, of course). It waited a minute before zipping past me (next to a No Passing sign of course). He must have been doing 40 in a 20 mph zone, which seems suicidal to me on these roads. I'm guessing the locals just don't have any patience for Tourists clogging up Their roads. I would have pulled over if he had just waited another minute. (There aren't a lot of good places to pull over.)

We drove all the way without really stopping (except for a short stop in Pa'ia to pick up second breakfast. Without stopping, the driving time to the airport would have been about 1 hour and 45 minutes.

We returned the rental car and checked in for our flight. We had 3 bags weighing 49, 49, and 56 pounds. The lady checking us in informed us we had to limit bags to 50 pounds each. Obviously, the math wasn't going to work, but she let us slide with something like 51/51/52 after a bit of shuffling.

It had stopped raining by the time we walked onto the tarmac and boarded the plane, but it was quite windy. The plane probably sat about 40 people, and was about three-fourths full. We arrived in Kauai after an hour long flight. Then we rented another car and drove about 35 minutes west to Kekaha, just outside of Waimea.

After dropping off our luggage at our rental house, we returned to Waimea for a late lunch at Shrimp Station. Then we stopped by a grocery store for some supplies. There are a couple stores here with decent selection.

We returned to our rental house to rest. That night, we drove about a mile south to get a viewing of the Independence Day fireworks display in Kekaha. Cars were lined up on both sides of the road leading up to the baseball field where the fireworks would originate. We stopped well short of the field and found a spot to wait next to the churling ocean. While we waited for the 9pm start, we saw several of the locals tossing small fireworks nearby onto the street. Then it was time for the main event. I haven't seen many fireworks, and I'm not sure if I've seen any in person before. Our kids haven't shown much interest before, but our youngest really wanted to see it this time. They loved it.

Fireworks in Kekaha

Afterwards, we returned to our rental house and I started plotting the following day's hike.


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