So I was a bit apprehensive about this but just like the tubing, it was better than fine and ended up as a favorite activity!
We signed up for the 3-hour Ultimate Ranch Tour, which is explained at their webpage:
3 hour Ultimate Ranch Tour
This tour crosses ranch land and heads to the overlook at top of the mountain pass … from here you get a glimpse of the south shore of Kauai, a view that few visitors (or residents) ever get to see. This scene was recently featured in the movie “The Descendants” and was the spot where George Clooney stood overlooking the estate he had inherited. Since this is a working cattle ranch you are bound to encounter livestock, but you may also see wild turkeys, boar, pheasant and Nene (the state bird of Hawaii). This tour includes snacks and beverages. A brief stop is made at the movie site where you may swing on the Indiana Jones rope swing (but there is not enough time on this tour to swim here). This tour is an hour shorter than the waterfall tour, but is a favorite of the guides as it includes some more difficult terrain and more elevation gain. If you are an experienced rider this is probably the best choice for you.Truly amazing scenery all around and really fun for a guy who gets giddy about driving thru puddles after a rain or snow melt!
Going to Kauai? Do this.
Our guides were great, two cousins who truly loved their job and also took the time to pick fresh guava fruit for us to try! If you were to do this tour, I would recommend requesting Ryan and Giggles as your tour guides!
I wish I would have written this post shortly after our trip because we learned (and forgot, it turns out...) a ton of local history, cultural stuff and beliefs that the natives hold from the aforementioned guides.
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| The two varmints all dressed up with a LOT of places to go. They fit you for a helmet and goggles first, then the drivers all have to do a short obstacle course to prove that they won't kill anyone out on the ranch and then you're off! This was at the fitting. |
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| The top half of the photo (above the ridge line) is the approximate area that we'll be spending time in today. Nevermind that gray dot on the mountain ridge as that will play into the story later on. |
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| This was our first stop of the tour. The mountain behind us is Mt. Haupu and the guides rattled off all of movies that have been filmed on the ridge. It has served as Korea, Vietnam and a few other countries but it was all done on this ridge. |
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| These two. I don't know what they were thinking at this point... Can't tell anything with Robby because his face is pretty much covered, but Caleb's little forced smile indicates that he thinks we got him into another serious situation much like the helicopter tour, of which, he was NO FAN! |
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| An idea of some of the easier, wide open terrain. |
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| The Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit in action! You cannot tell due to the bandana around my face, but I was having a BALL!! |
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| Places like this are why they make the drivers do the obstacle course! This was our second stop of the tour as we had to get out of our vehicles and get a lesson on how to traverse area's like this because there is a history of people putting their rented machine over (or off) a cliff. |
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| This is our lesson where they show how hard it is to flip one of these over, but that it can, and has, been done! There are also some REALLY steep drop-offs in places too so they warned about that and how to keep your front wheels from pulling you over the edge. Hearing that, honestly made me a little nervous again... |
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| These are our tour guides, Ryan and Giggles. I have a suspicion that these two would be really fun to drink a beer with... just a hunch. |
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| Off we go! We had to go one at a time thru this part and wait at the bottom just in case someone didn't heed the lesson we were given and wrecked their ride! |
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| Some wild boar out on the trail. We didn't take this picture but it was in the package we purchased once we got home. Which also explains how we have pictures of the four of us in a moving ATV. |
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| Our third stop was on a small ridge that required inexperienced ATV drivers to turn around once we done here. Yikes! |
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| Overlooking the ranch that we're touring on the same stop. |
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| More of the same. |
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| Third stop still and this is where we got some trail mix and water plus the fresh guava fruit that Giggles found and picked for us. This was one of the places where we learned some local history. That dark spot on the mountain just left of center in the picture (kinda looks like the outline of Homer Simpson) is a cave and there was some lore that there are some human remains below and inside of that cave. If memory serves, this cave contains the remains of Kings but the other more creepy part of the tale is that the servants who took their remains up there either had to kill themselves in the cave or jump... thus, killing themselves. This is also the spot where we learned that we should not move rocks while on the islands. It seems it's an ancient custom that when someone died, their loved ones might identify a rock and place it in a specific location as a tribute to the fallen. This is hard for a family with a former Earth Science teacher in it who has a tiny bit of history "permanently borrowing" cool rocks from, uh... places. |
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| Now there's some fine looking peeps, right there! That water that you can barely see just above my noggin will figure into our last day on the island. That's a cliff-hanger type thingy to get everyone coming back over and over to learn what it is that I tease about. |
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| This was taken just before a narrow spot in the road with the aforementioned steep drop-offs. |
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| Our fourth stop with a short hike involved to get to the spot where they filmed a scene for Raiders of the Lost Ark. That is the rope that Harrison Ford swung on (I assume the rope itself gets replaced every so often...) and they gave us some other history stuff as well. Then they tell you that you can swing on the rope in a similar fashion to Mr. Ford if you would like. Mama and I turned to look at Robby and he was already disrobing! LOL! He went first! And then third. :-) |
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| His throng of adoring fans! I took video of his plunge and Mama took a picture, but do you think we can find the flippin' picture??? |
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| And there's the lad climbing out of the water! |
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| This next part of the drive was fairly long but well worth it as we started going up the side of the mountain! And doing it on a narrow pathway too! |
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| That ridge out in the ocean behind us is Kawelikoa Point. We are quite literally on the peak of the mountain here. Some wicked cool history about this place is that not many people are really allowed down on that beach because as the Island was invaded twice in the 1700's, there were thousands of people who perished down there so it's treated as a sort of Holy land. The other really cool bit of history which I believe Ryan said wasn't recorded anywhere is that Jackie Kennedy brought the kids here for a bit after JFK's assassination to get away from media. There's a ranch down there by the beach which you cannot see. You will in the next picture though. It's called Kuahonu Point. |
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| The ranch on Kauhonu Point from google.com/maps. |
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| That little clearing in the near middle of the picture is the grassy area just to the left of my arm (and behind the fence post) in the family picture above. Just above that grassy area is the parking lot where our ATV's were parked. The area where we're standing is beneath tree cover. |
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| That gray dot that I mentioned in one of the first photos now appears again to point to the area where we're at in that picture to give an idea of the bay that is down behind us. The Kuahonu Point ranch is just to the top right of the center of the photo. |
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| Again, what goes up, much come down. This is near the top of our ascent from the summit. I believe we're looking at the town of Lihue in the distance. |
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| More of the same. |
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| Glad we didn't meet any vehicles coming up! |
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| Taken from the same path on our way down. |
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| The varmints! They both appear a little happier here as we're back on mostly level ground and finally got this rig up over 23 mph's! |
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| The trees that lined the long driveway from the initial home/ranch area out to the cool area that we just saw in the previous pictures. |
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| The little man after getting back to the initial launching point and being able to use the facilities and wash up, getting the mud and dust off of his face and the bugs out of his teeth! |
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