Hawaii Vaca, Post 25 - Day 9 Part 2 - North Shore Drive

After the ATV tour, we didn't have anything planned for day 9. So, we went exploring. It really doesn't take all that long to drive the entire Kauai Island, so we drove as far as the North road will take people and made some stops along the way.

The first stop, with pictures anyway, was the Kilauea Lighthouse.  The pathway to walk down to the lighthouse was guarded by a gate that someone had rudely locked.  No matter, we stretched our legs and took some good pics!

We were warned by Cousin Dwight on the Pearl Harbor tour, that the leading cause of death on the Hawaiian Islands was coconuts falling onto people's noggins.  He went on to say that while they don't cause as many deaths as coconuts, pineapples cracking the cranium will certainly ruin your vacation!  I can see why!  The pineapples were great, by the way.  They are mostly white in color with only a hint of a yellow hue.

The bridges out here are quite narrow.  Not sure when they would have initially been built, but two cars could not pass each other.  The brown signage under the yield sign says, "Local courtesy, 5 - 7 vehicles".  That's Hawaii nice.

I cannot say where this was at, but we had not seen the ocean for a few minutes so Robby wanted to get out when we did!  It was just a little roadside stopping point...  with chickens.

Along with chickens, they also have monkeys!

Lot's of monkeys!

Another oddball bridge.  You can kind of see it over/thru the foliage starting just to the right of the pickup.  You had to make a hard right, and go up a steep, but short, incline onto the bridge.  There's also a telephone pole on the very left edge of the photo.  If you didn't take a hard right, you would go down a treacherous looking driveway as somebody decided to build a house down by the waters edge.

Just one of many little treasures that you run across on this road!  Look at how clear that water is!

Cave #1.

Cave #2.  This thing was MAMMOTH in size!

Another prime example of a picture not doing nature justice.

I note that we are missing some more pictures here.  I know this for a fact because when we got to the end of the road (literally!) at Hanapea Beach (I don't have that spelled right), it took about 15 minutes to get the car turned around because of the enormous amount of vehicles present and virtually no parking lot.  During this time, Mama got out of the vehicle and took some photos of the beach and they are not present in the picture folders that I organized after we got home...  Hmmm...   first with Robby swinging on the Raiders of the Lost Ark rope swing and now this!

This is the entrance to the Limahuli Garden & Preserve, National Tropical Botanical Garden.  This would have been our kind of thing (Me and mama, anyway) but we had hungry boys and the place was closed, so the hungry boys won this round!

We finally paused for lunch.  Found a little local taco stand and had some fish tacos among other items.  Good food and we ate on their front porch with this as our view.

The birds hung around to get scraps of food that sloppy, ravenous people would drop in their haste to jam their pie holes full.  I believe that makes them smarter than us, even though we have a term like "bird brain".

This is one sculpture that did not get torn down last Summer/Fall, which is surprising since you can see her boob.  Surely, somebody, somewhere has to be offended by this!

Happier boys with some food in their guts.  Shortly after this pic was taken, Rob starting pitching his arguments for being in some body of water, whether it was the pool at the plantation or the ocean, it didn't matter. He just wanted out of the car.  Oh, we got out of the car alright when dad spotted a guitar store!  We got out and played some guitars to help sooth the soul!

Nothing special about this pic, but I included it basically because if you weren't driving next to the ocean, your roads pretty much looked like this, and it was beautiful!

And so it was.  Back to the cottages to cook some dinner and let the boys hit the pool!