Ambling

4/9/2011
Last night was our third night in Kauai, and it was the first night that Beth and I both actually slept through the night. We awoke at 8:37 am, and enjoyed a delicions breakfast of reheated tacos. After a leisurely period of getting ready for the day, we set out to hike in the Valley.
The state park where we hiked was about an hour from where we are staying. For most people vacationing in Kauai, it would be about a two hour drive, but since we were already in the middle of nowhere, it wasn't nearly as long of a trip. Arriving in the visitors' center of the park, we had waited enough time since breakfast that we decided to eat some sandwiches in the park's restuarant, saving our peanut butter and honey sandwiches for the trail.
Leaving the restaurant, it took us about four passes past our turn-off before we finally realized correct direction we were supposed to go to find our six mile loop. Once we finally discovered the correct location of the trailhead, we started off down the trail. Although the signs were relatively well-marked, we missed the first turn that the trail takes, so we spent several minutes wandering around the YWCA camp. We met a helpful man there who let us look at his detailed topographical map, which was worlds ahead of our free simplistic map. This should have been a sign for us to return to the welcome center and buy a copy of the map, but we continued to fumble around looking for our trail.
We headed back toward the car and quickly noticed the correct turn-off for the trail. I was a little uneasy about our shaky start, and I hoped that this was not a sign for the rest of our excursion. All the signs and trails were easy to see after our first two little mishaps, until we reached about the three mile mark, about half-way into our trip. Somewhere along the way we lost the correct trail, and we found ourselves four miles into the hike, but back near where we had started the trek. We had indeed completed a loop, but it was simply not the loop that we had intended to complete. Fortunately, it was only a mile hike back to the car. Overall, we hiked about five miles as opposed to six, and I suppose that it was a fortunate thing, because the rain became much heavier just as we reached our car.
We headed back to the dome for a quick shower, and we went down the street to a local restaurant for appetizers. We quickly discovered that the loaded nachos and sweet potato fries were enough for dinner for both of us, so we returned to the dome again after our dinner to pack and prepare for our trip to Honolulu in the morning.
This ends the "vacation" phase for Beth, and we will be traveling to the city in the morning for her conference. I hope that she gets some more vacation time before she has to head back to work next week; she works hard and she needs the rest. I am looking forward to the next phase of our trip and the adventures that I will be having with Adrian while Beth is in her conference.