The Last Day in Kauai

By the time this is posted, we'll be in the process of packing our bags and wrapping up our vacation.  My emotional state on these days is always a puzzle to me.  While I have gotten to the place where I feel good, feel that we have done almost as much as we can do with a young child on an island full of outdoor activities and am beginning to miss home, at the same time, the thought doing laundry, packing up and going home makes me feel both a bit surly and melancholy.  It reminds me of what I think of as "after the party syndrome" -- the big let down I usually feel after planning a big event and then watching all the guests leave.  I don't really mind the packing or the cleaning up, but I think there's some draining away of the kinetic energy that went into making the event or vacation happen.  All those things I was excited about are now wrapped up and gone until the next event or next vacation. 

I'm trying not to let these feeling take away the last moments of beauty that we have here.  As much as I love Chicago, and feel like I was supposed to be a Chicagoan, I also regularly wish that Chicago had stunning mountain views or ocean beaches and ocean breezes (of course, we have Lake Michigan, but it is not quite the same, and the west side of the lake is really the low quality shore... the place where sand has to be imported in every year).  Nothing makes me feel more serene than sitting on the shore of a restful beach (like Anini) feeling the breeze off the water and listening to the ocean sounds.   The city is my home, but it is not a place that brings me the spiritual well being that comes from staring up and a night sky full of stars, uninterrupted by city lights and sirens. But I often wonder if I find Kauai so delightful because it is the antithesis of Chicago -- a complete and polar opposite that forces me to dump my issues at the door simply by being completely unlike my day-to-day world.  I know that it is precious because it is not easily reached and time here is limited.  Certainly I will leave here with many good memories -- and looking forward to the next visit.

Since my last slide show with Flickr seemed to work well (and saved me a little bit of photo editing), I thought I'd wrap things up with another little show covering our last few days. Tuesday morning I managed to capture some pictures of the little crabs that live on the beach and we took a trip up Wailua River to the Fern Grotto. Wednesday we explored Lydgate Beach Park and the wonderful playground nearby (a place where Z could have played forever.  Thursday we went to Na Aina Ka -- a lovely, privately developed garden on the north shore of Kauai that is open to the public for tours and has a nice children's garden.


Friday will probably be mostly "dry" adventures (since we have to check out of our beach house at 10 AM and our flight out doesn't leave until 9 PM) and maybe a small family celebration of Z's 2nd birthday (official celebration to be held next weekend).

I wish all of you a lovely weekend.  I'll be back to my regular posting schedule and more fibery topics next week.  Thank you to all of you who checked in for my vacation photos.  In most ways they are for me more than for any one else, but it makes me happy to know that others enjoy them, too.