Kauai

    Continued from Friday:
     Friday morning at 7:20 am we took a 45-minute inter-island flight from Oahu to Kauai, where we're planning on spending the next 4 days hiking around the island.
    Kauai, called "The Garden Island," is another world from busy, urban Honolulu.  The island's west coast, where we're staying, is especially remote and isolated.
     Below is a shot of Major's Bay, near where we're staying.

    Which I guess begs the question:  why are we staying there?
    Well, because for $75 a night we were able to get a two-room cottage on the beach at  Barking Sands U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range Facility, another perk of Tom being retired military.  Provided you don't mind staying on a working missile range facility during your vacation.
      The cottages at Barking Sands aren't exactly the luxurious Hale Koa (see post from 4/2/2015);  but they're quite nice.
       Our cottage is on the left, below.

    The decor is  cute and cozy and functional:

    Our bedroom has an air-conditioner.  Hey, don't laugh, it works great!

We have a  lanai, which is what they call a patio or deck in Hawaii.

    Views from our lanai:

        But though our end of the island is at the opposite end of the island from Kauai's  only shopping center, we are close the Waimea Canyon, also known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.  The Waimea Canyon supposedly has many wonderful hiking trails, a few of which we hope to discover over the next four days.
    This is actually my second trip to Kauai, as I came here a few years ago with my sister Romaine.
    That time we stayed at Poipu Beach, which is the slightly more commercial resort area on the southern end of the island.
    And so since I know the Poipu area a little we decided to swing by there our way out to the west coast from the airport, which is located in the town of Lihue on the east coast.

The road from Lihue to Poipu Beach.

    Our first stop at Poipu was at the Poipu Tropical Burger for breakfast.
    I longed to return to the Poipu Tropical Burger because during my first visit with Romaine

I fell in love with  crushed-pineapple-macadamia-coconut-filled  papaya boat they serve here.

    Tom and I split the papaya boat and he also ordered strawberry french toast,










...while I ordered eggs, hash browns and toast, which they brought out a la cart. 8D!

After breakfast our next stop at Poipu Beach was the Grand Hyatt Kauai.
It's actually worth a look-see.

    Its facade looks like that of a palace:

View from the lobby:

    Views of the grounds:

    The rooms at the Grand Hyatt Kauai range from $440 per night for a single to $5,240 per night for a 2,463 sq. ft. suite.
    But anybody can walk around the grounds for free.
    There's a walking path leading from the Hyatt grounds to a cliff above the sea called Makahuena Point.  The path offers some wonderful views of the beach and the blue, blue sea below:

    After our tour of the Hyatt we drove a few miles inland to visit Koloa, a historic old sugar mill town,

...where we stopped for a shave ice, a must-eat while in Hawaii.

    After our visit to Koloa we drove for about 40 minutes until we reached the west coast and the Pacific Missile Range Facility.

...and where we also saw a cute little lizard.

    Then we checked into our cottage.

    Each cottage has a name.  The name of our place is Hale Malu.  Note the chicken in our front yard.  There are chickens wandering freely everywhere in Kauai.

We met our nice neighbors who are renting the cottage across the street behind us. Jimmy (sitting) and Billy (standing)  come here for a two-week vacation every year.  They were very helpful in telling us about the hiking venues on the island.

    After we were settled we started thinking about dinner so we headed for Shenanigans, which is the name of the base all hands club.
    An all hands club is an eating facility that's open to all ranks.  Back when I worked on a  U.S. Army post  in Germany  - and it still might be that way today - the officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel each had their own restaurants where only members of their rank could go.

Shenanigans is right on the beach with a nice ocean view.

    After dinner we returned to our cottage to sit on our lanai and watch the sunset.

About half a dozen other people came to our yard to watch the sunset.  Apparently ours is the yard to come to to watch the sunset.

    And then our day, which had started at 4 am in Honolulu, was done.