We decided to postpone our shower time to let the Cornell kids rotate through the bathroom as they we leaving. They got off at 6:45 and then we got showered and dressed and headed for the North coast. We ate a small breakfast in the car and got up to the top of the island quite quickly. I think it was a combination of being Sunday and being early on the road, which helped. We drove to the end of the road (now we have been to both ends as far as you can go), which is Ha’ena Beach and the beginning of the Kalalau trail. The beginning of the trail was quite steep and rocky (and tricky in spots where the path was wet), but it eventually flattened out a bit. We found a few good scenic spots to stop and take a picture and at one spot I took a picture of an emergency helicopter landing spot (see pic). It was quite tiny and on the edge of the cliff. I would have been scared to death to get on it there, but I guess if you were badly injured and needed a lift off of the cliffs, you wouldn’t care how you got down. We walked on for a bit (the whole trail is 11 miles, but we had no intention of doing the whole thing- see photo of the other side of the Na Pali coast) and then turned around and walked down with a couple from the Boston area. They are recently retired and we had a nice time chatting with them. We walked down the road a bit and took a picture of a huge sea cave next to the road and then got back to the car. There were lots of people waiting for parking by this time and our spot was taken immediately. We drove back to Hanalei and stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the taro fields (see pic). We were going to stop for lunch on the road, but it was quite busy by this time and all of the café parking lots were full so we ate a few crackers that we had brought with us in the car. By this time, it had started raining and we drove back towards camp. It poured in places and even though it was only 3:00 we decided to stop at Brick Oven Pizza for takeout to eat when we got up the mountain. We were so lucky because the rain stopped for about 5 minutes as we pulled in and we were able to unload the car without getting soaked. We ate an early dinner and since it was so cold in the great room, decided to go to our room and read in bed. We climbed into bed at 5 and it started absolutely pouring. I thought that maybe we were going to get the whole 90 inches of rain in one night! It finally stopped a little after 8 and shortly thereafter we shut out the lights. It felt a little weird to be at the camp as we were the only ones there.
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