"Hiking" Maha'ulepu Trail to Ha'ula Beach

Kristen, Natalie, and the Nufer family know this as my #1 favorite run of all time. While they probably don't share the same opinion, I think the cliffs, continuous ocean views, and contrasting colors of green and blue make this a top Kauai destination. While I was in Ohio, Brady took his bike on the dirt road that leads to Keoneloa Bay (this can be reached via car or hiking trail), parked his bike, and then "discovered" a new beach: Ha'ula beach. We were anxious to explore it together, so yesterday morning, we hit the trail.

Possibly the best thing about this hike: the start is minutes from our house. No drive time!

I put "hiking" in quotations for a few reasons. I have some qualms with this trail. In my opinion, a hiking trail leads you somewhere you cannot reach by another means, or it is at least difficult to reach by other means. You explore and see things other people are unable to see. The serenity and calm of a rarely-hiked trail is one of my favorite experiences. Because you can drive to the Bay, there are not masses of people, but there are quite a few without the sweat, dirt, and effort that should be required to get there. My other qualm is that this hike is a little too easy, although when I had my 32 lb son on my back for all of 20 minutes of our hiking, I thought I was going to die. I'm seriously so sore today. Those two factors make it a better trail run than a hike.

However, hike a mile past the cars, and this is the reward: an exclusive beach.

I may or may not have edited my sweat stains out of these pictures.

Zachary immediately found a walking stick and hiked around while eating his goldfish...

...until he found a rock, and then he didn't care much about his fishies.

Goodbye, gorgeous beach. We'll see you again when we convince a visitor to check you out.

Love the blue, blue water.

The rest of our afternoon consisted of cleaning and yardwork. Funny story about that:

Our landlord wrote us the other day, asking to come over this Thursday. He lives in CA, and is visiting for the week. He wants to get his golf clubs (in our garage), and check out the bathrooms with a contractor.

In our contract, we are responsible for mowing and trimming the lawn. Someone is paid monthly by the landlord to maintain the exterior bushes that surround our house. We were surprised to learn that the landlord expected us to also maintain the trees and all the weeding in an exceptionally overgrown area of the backyard. No matter--we weren't going to complain. We are getting this house for $1000/month cheaper than the last tenants, and we want to stay. We've done our best to fix many problems in the house without doing more than letting him know it was done.

We set aside time to take care of the overgrown area yesterday. For three solid hours, Brady worked and worked, and frankly, it looks fantastic. (He saw the biggest centipede of his life, too!) In one part of our yard, there was a sage bush that was taking over--way up to the windows and it went about 6 feet in width. Brady trimmed it down to about 1/10th of it's original size.

Our next door neighbor came over on Friday of this past week to let us know he'd be having a huge 60th birthday party in his backyard last night. He wasn't kidding. There were so many people there, and a live band, caterers, the works. During the chaos next door, Brady took out the trash. He RAN back into the house, and said, "Karen, you have got to come out here!" I was sure it was something funny by his expression.

I walked outside and WHAM! It absolutely REEKED of sage. You wouldn't believe it. It was like being deep in the woods, with 10 fragrant sage candles also burning. Oh man! The party next door had to have smelled it all night long! We felt so bad, but it was also hilarious. We're taking them some treats for his birthday to try and smooth things over and apologize.