Row, Row, Row Your Kayak....

...into the tropical trade winds! (We'll get to that part later.) On Wednesday, we went to the little town of Wailua (still in Kauai) and rented two sea kayaks. The Rastafarian local who loaned us our kayaks (for a major price) looked at us funny and asked us "Are you sure you want to take the kids on the river TODAY?" We said that we did because we were running out of time to do things on Kauai, and the trade winds had been blowing for days and were expected to continue to blow all week. He said that we would have an easy ride up the Wailua River with our kayaks, but the ride back would be challenging.....we decided to go ahead with the trip anyway.................

The ride up the river was scenic and easy paddling. Julia entertained us with many renditions of songs including (but not limited to):

Row, row, row your boat

Gently Down the stream

If you see an alligator,

Don't forget to SCREAM!

We kayaked up to the fork in the river and pulled into Fern Grotto.
Then we stopped at a little swimming hole with a rope swing. The kids braved the cold water and took several swings into the river. This "splasher" is Jourdan!
Of course, my OLDEST child again looks like he's having the most fun!Then we went back to the fork in the river and went the other way. We then left our kayaks behind for a 1 mile hike (each way) to Secret Falls. At one point the trail went through a river......down a narrow path through lush vegetation........and through forest trails. Part of me couldn't decide which song described our day best:1. "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"; 2."Climb Every Mountain" (...ford every stream, follow every rainbow...); or 3. "Over the River and Through the Woods" (to the Secret Falls we go...)!?!?!?

The kids and Dad decided to swim beneath the falls. Mom was wiser....it was very cold! I just had to include this next picture because it was one of those spontaneous pictures of Julia that turned out so cute, even though she was cold and wet.Then we began the journey back to the kayaks. Near the end of the trail, THIS fell from above............ That log that Jourdan is touching fell from somewhere in the tree canopy and touched my hair as it fell just behind my head. If I had been 1/10 of a second slower on that trail, I'd have been knocked out or killed. Jonathan was about 10 feet in front of me when we heard the crash (and I felt the brush against the back of my hair)....debris flew and hit him. The log is about the size (in length)of a Duraflame log, but it was almost twice as big around. I avoided disaster on this trip (unlike the alpine slide adventure in Park City, Utah and Julia's first/only rodeo calf riding competition)by a tiny margin! It couldn't have been closer (without injury, that is)! Grandpa Hale has a theory that it was tossed by the Menehune.....(you'll have to look that one up - or ask me later if you're not familiar with "them").

Anyway, back to the story about the trade winds. This paddle upstream took only about a half an hour. It was nice and relaxing which is counter-intuitive for paddling UPstream. The problem came when we headed DOWNstream! Those trade winds had really picked up while we were hiking (and so forth). Paddling back to the boat launch was painful to say the least. It took over an hour.....and we paddled constantly. When I stopped digging my oar into the water, I actually felt our kayak going backward. Julia tried to help paddle, but how much HELP can a tiny 9-year-old girl really be in this situation! I had blisters on my hands from the oar, and my bicep muscles were soooooo sore as was my back. It was really a fun trip, don't get me wrong; it was just hard to end it with such effort.