On Our Way to Lowe's Cottage

The roosters started crowing around 4:30 in the morning and neither of us could sleep so we got up. I read my book for a while and Dave went out to collect fire wood. It was about half an hour before he returned and he said that he had hiked along the Nu'alolo trail to collect the firewood. We continued to fuss around the cabin for a while until Dave couldn't take it anymore. We had run out of food for breakfast, but it was only 7:30 and the restaurant didn't open until 9:00. So we decided to drive to some of the lookouts until we could go have breakfast. We drove up to the end of the road where the Pihea trailhead is located. This is the trail that goes into the Alkali swamp. We hiked this trail the last time we were here. It's really different from other areas, but we needed a break from hiking so we decided not to do this hike. This time. There is a great lookout here that looks down into the Kalalau valley behind Kalalau beach at the end of the Napali coast trail. This is a big relatively wide valley that spills out into the ocean. This morning was foggy though, so the pictures were not a clear as I would have liked.

Kalalau Valley from Lookout

We drove down to the next lookout that looked into the same valley and walked around for little while longer until it was time for breakfast. Then we packed up our things, checked out and headed down to Ishihara's grocery in Waimea for some poke. We decided to check out the artsy town of Hanapepe because I had seen an ad for a ceramics shop that had welcome tiles for the front door that I'd been wanting for our home. However, the town is closed on Sundays, except for the liquor store.

Kalalau Valley From Kalalau Lookout

We called the Lowe's to tell them we were on our way to Kapaa and if the cottage was ready we wanted to check in. Mieko said that was fine so we headed to Kapaa. We've stayed at the Lowe's cottage before. It's a lovely cottage up the Kapaa valley a couple miles from town. It's bigger than what we need, but it's relatively low priced and would be about the same as a hotel room in town. The Kapaa valley roads are a little confusing because the valley has all these ripples of ridges and gullies caused by the rivers. The roads wind up and down and around until you can get fairly lost, which we did until I finally got my baring and found the Lowe's cottage.

Another View of Kalalau Valley

We unloaded our stuff and then headed back to town. I had seen a craft fair in town that I wanted to check out before it closed. I found a number of omiage (small gifts that Japanese give to friends when returning from a trip.) Then we went to the Foodland grocery store to pick up some things for dinner. This grocery store has a better selection than the Save Mart grocery store. We went back to the cottage and had vegetable curry. I tested out the wi-fi connection and found that if I stood up and held the laptop at about chest high, I could get connected. Every time I tried to lower it, I lost my connection. I finally found that if I sat on the back of one of the chairs with my feet on the seat, I could get high enough to maintain a connection. So, I've been typing up all my journaling ahead of time so that when I upload them I won't have to spend much time on the Internet.

One More View of Kalalau Valley

Waimea Canyon Valley

Hanapepe Swing Bridge

Garden From the Deck

Living Area

Kitchen

Loft

Lowe's Cottage Bedroom