Day 10 of our vacation, and as I mentioned yesterday, it was time to leave the Big Island (Hawaii) and head off to the second island of our honeymoon: Kauai. We flew through Honolulu, past the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor, and then on to Lihue.

The island’s settlements are laid out a bit like a backward C…the West side of the island is entirely wild (and we’ll discuss later!), while the South, East and North are settled. We had decided to go to the northern part of the island for a couple of days, but before we headed North, we decided to check out Opaekae Falls. It was listed in all the guidebooks as a great waterfall, and we love our waterfalls. Apparently, it shows up in a bunch of movies and TV shows too, although mostly older stuff. It was worth a visit, although I was disappointed we couldn’t get a better direct view of it and with more water volume.

We headed up the East Coast of the island afterwards, grabbed some food somewhere along the way, as I recall, maybe Subway (I don’t know why that is sticking in my head), and made it to Princeville. We were staying in an AirBNB-equivalent style rental which was my first time doing so. It was a condo next to a golf course, a nice, simple structure for the two of us for a couple of nights. Princeville is the local “town” although more of a village. The terrain was mixed, with hills starting to show in the background and some flat agriculture. Felt very different from Big Island, more lush.

I’m including a postcard of the beach we went to called Ke’e Beach which is basically the end of the road when you go to the North West corner of the island. We didn’t get great shots the first day, mostly we just drove around to get the lay of the land, although we saw this really cool tree root system at the beach.

Later, as the sun started to set, we went to Hanalei Pier, which is on a large bay that was made famous in the movie South Pacific. It was a nice place to watch some of the sunset.

As a small spoiler alert, we were also starting to see the mountains of the island, and the forms that would occupy our attention later in the visit.

It’s hard to get a sense of the majesty of the place. But this postcard of the area shows what we starting to realize was an amazing island.

A busy day but we saw Pearl Harbor (from a distance), a waterfall, the pier, a nice beach, and an interesting sunset. Not a bad day overall.