Kaua'i, Day Six: West and North Shore Beaches

It's all about the beaches today. This was the day that John and I drove from our south side beach house at Kekaha Beach to our north side, upcountry house.

I realize now that I never showed you any pictures of the actual places we stayed. You can see Hale Moana here. Yes, it was a little decadent. Yes, we did love it. Yes, outdoor showers rock. Our north shore home away from home, 100 Shades of Green, is just as wonderful. I wish I could show you the stars from that hot tub on the deck or let you smell the ginger.

We started our drive up highway 50 to the main entry place for Kekaha Beach Park. (The link will take you to the images in my gallery). Kekaha Beach was the closest beach to us for the first week, and had beatiful golden sands and high surf. You definitely could go in, but you had to be careful with the waves and the currents.

After a brief stop at Kekaha Beach, we drove to the end of highway 50 (past the Pacific Missile Range Facility) and down several miles of bumpy dirt road to Polihale State Park (again, the link takes you to the beginning of these pictures in my gallery). Polihale Beach is on the true west side of the island and marks the start of the south end of the Na Pali coast (one of Kaua'i's most famous features). The surf here was absolutely amazing. It started out fairly sunny when we got there, but got increasingly overcast as the afternoon wore on (which seems to be the trend for Kaua'i in October). The beach was fairly empty and it definitely wasn't what I would have consdered swimmable, but it was beautiful and definitely worth the trip. And I did get a couple of videos from the beach:

Big Waves at Polihale:

Surfer at Polihale:

Kite Boarder at Polihale:

After that it was time to move our stuff from Kekaha to west of Hanalei on the north side of Kaua'i. The change in the scenery is amazing, as you move from somewhat dry and rather red to exceptionally lush and green. It's worth driving from one end of the highway to the other, just to observe the changes (and unlike the Road to Hana on Maui, the whole trip will probably take you less than 3 hours and is not that aggressive). While we waited for our new digs to become available, we headed down to Ke'e Beach (yes, the link takes you to my gallery, with a brief detour near Princeville) for the sunset. Ke'e Beach is literally as far as you can go on Highway 560, 10 miles past it's start point at Princeville. It's a beautiful beach, and you can take a swim as you watch the sun go down. And in case you wanted to know what watching the sun go down at Ke'e Beach is like, I have one last video from the day to share:

Sunset at Ke'e Beach:

(The "big bad boys" I am referring to at the end of the video are the waves... unfortunately there were no buff men on the beach besides my favorite guy...)