28 Apr Vacation on Kaua’i Day 1 – Poke, happy hour, and finally camping!

Thursday April 8

Busy morning buzzing around for 3 hours as we prepared to leave the farm. The day was promising and sunny, we said our final tearful goodbyes with the promise to return more than once before our flight home on April 22.

My biggest concern of the day was what rental we’d end up with; we’d been aiming to sleep in the car (or at least have the option), and I was hoping to use a free upgrade to get us a minivan. But having heard the entire island was booked with the recent no-quarantine open to tourism, I was not hopeful. The agent told us as much when I checked in, but instead of walking us back to the cars, he pointed out the row of suvs (all sizes: compact, standard and full 3rd row) and said “go pick your car, just stop when you hit the minivans”. We compared the fold-down trunk space capacity of brand new Nissan Rogue, Chevy Equinox, Jeep Compass, Ford Edge.. all fairly small and not looking great for sleeping space (short and not quite flat). But there was a Dodge Journey that had a 3rd row and when we put all the seats down, the back looked plenty perfect for sleeping!

We jumped in the car, checked out at the gate, and off we went! Vacation officially begun!

Our first stops were to grab some final camping supplies: oatmeal, couple ramen packets, beer and ice! I called up our fellow Colorado transplant island friend Lindsay to see if she wanted to meet for lunch in Lihue after we finished errands. Fish Express poke mart was the choice! Aaron and I split a bowl of dried marlin, shrimp salad and himachi atop sushi rice with all the fixings! It was so yummy, quick and easy. Perfect lunch stop on day one!

Jenny invited us to happy hour at our favorite Kīlauea bar the Bistro at 4p, so we had a couple hours to kill as we returned to our lively north shore. We’d never explored Anahola before, so we toured the tiny residential streets lined with quaint houses of all kinds until we found the beach! There was a nice big area to park and we felt right at home with the other locals taking a break by the ocean waves.

Aaron took a quick half hour nap while I listened to the waves and sat. I’d stored my laptop at the farm with the rest of our luggage so I wouldn’t be tempted to work for the first week of our vacation. I’ll admit as I found myself with 20-30 to kill while aaron napped, my first instinct was to grab my computer and try to get something done. I’ve packed in so much productivity in the last 5 months working two jobs on Kauai that it’s now about making an effort to do nothing… just looking out at the ocean and enjoy the sounds of the waves.

We made it to happy hour a little early and got our favorite back-patio table. Soon after Jenny showed up with Kat, her farm mate and Ethan, another fellow farmer that is originally from wisconsin and Minnesota and thus fit right in with us! We had some cheap beers, aaron and I split a brat and fries and we all left the bar by about 5:30-6.

Aaron and I had already picked out where we wanted to camp that night: a secluded, dirt road leading to a rough rocky beach that largely only neighborhood locals used, and just so happened to be our closest beach to the farm: Larsens Beach. We knew it’d be quiet there and we wouldn’t be bothered so it was an easy choice. As we turned for the hundredth time onto our residential street, Koolau road, we saw a thin, oval-headed man walking two large dogs in the direction of the end of the street. Shocked and immediately intrigued- we pulled a u turn to try and get another look at the person, only to see him leave the road and follow a path along the seemingly endless black stone wall that bordered our most famous neighbor’s property: Mark Zuckerberg, founder and ceo of Facebook. We were positive we’d finally gotten a glimpse of the tech recluse, rumored to be building a go kart track and apocalypse bunker on his 1000 acre land parcel just across the road from our farm’s driveway. We turned around again to head to Larsen’s with shock and laughter at the sighting.

Since it was already late in the day we’d planned to just sleep in the car and save ourselves the setup time. As we pulled up we saw the faintest of a sunset and decided to walk partly to the beach to get a better view. We headed down the path and immediately noticed a tent up just left and above the main path, and felt eased by a sight of another camper. A little further down we saw another little left offshoot trail and decided to check it out. It lead to a perfect 15’ clearing, ground covered in soft ironwood pine needles, with an ocean view.

The spot was so lovely we immediately decided we had to throw our tent up here for the night. Luckily our backpacking tent is light and super quick to assemble! We had our camp made shortly after dark and sat with some beers to boil some eggs for the backpacking trip that would start Saturday morning.