Saturday, February 16, 2013

Odds And Ends And Farewells


Wouldn’t you know it, today we have to leave and the weather is beautiful. But there is some sense of order to the universe in spite of the meteorite crashing into Russia. The trades are blowing in some really unsettled weather and it could get downright miserable on Monday. Of course, I will be back at work on Monday so what do I care about the weather in Princeville? We vacated our unit by the required time of 10:00 AM and drove slowly towards Lihue. We stopped in Kapa’a and wandered through the permanent craft fair, picking up a couple of t-shirts in the Authentic Red Dirt Shirt Outlet. For those of you Mike Rowe fans, he came to Hawaii a few years ago, washed windows on Oahu and then came to Kauai to play in the mud. All of the outlet stores are running that footage. We did purchase one of those shirts a few years ago for our son. You have to be real careful for the first ½ dozen washes or so but after that the color stays put. From there we headed to Koloa and had lunch at the Kauai Food Truck before making a second visit to The McBryde National Botanical Park where we managed to kill another hour. One of the places I’ve always wanted to check out is Akuhini Landing at the mouth to Hanamaulu Bay so we spent some time there as well. There was one native with a net, checking the water for fish. I waited about ½ hour for him to throw that sucker but no dice. Either he was camera shy or there was nothing for him to throw it at. And finally one last trip into Walmart was needed for our return flight snacks. We didn’t get so much as a bag of peanuts from the airline on the way out. Our grand tour from one end of the island to the other felt as if we were saying good bye for a few years to an island we have become quite comfortable with. Our rental car returned, we found ourselves at the Lihue Airport by 5:00 but that still left us with a huge chunk of time. We figured to check our one bag, clear security and then relax in the lounge area until supper. Even that didn’t pan out for us since the American Airlines Ticket counter doesn’t open until 7:40 PM. That’s almost 3 hours of sitting on the concrete half wall which given the alternative of no seats, I’ll take the wall.

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