Coffee, clouds, roosters and whales.

May I begin by saying that I'm thrilled to be in my bed at the condo right now blogging and not on a flight back to the mainland like I was supposed to be.  :)  This extra day in Kauai is positively glorious!  Today was action packed from beginning to end.  I got up early this morning, swiped the rental car, and headed off on my own to Hanalei to mail some postcards to the fam (and ended up purchasing a great pair of Billabong surf shorts from the Hanalei surf shop along the way.)  By the time I got back to the condo, everyone else was ready to roll so we packed up the mountaineer and headed southward.  Our first stop was the Kauai coffee company where we taste-tested MANY flavors of coffee (between all of us, I'm pretty certain we tasted every flavor they had!) and loaded up on gifts for ourselves and those back home.  It was neat also to drive past the rows and rows of coffee plants....and I really enjoyed the amazing smell of the car the rest of the day as the bags of beans we purchased smell fantastic!

The Kauai Coffee Company Cafe and giftshop.

Rick samples some coffee while I munch on a coffee-flavored ice cream cone on the back deck of the Kauai Coffee Co. where the samplin' is set up!

Keith's mom and I on the front porch of the Kauai Coffee Co.

After we were sufficiently caffeinated, we headed up the long and windy road to Waimea canyon.  It was a beautiful drive up the mountain, but hard to keep our heads out of the clouds....literally!  It was amazing to stand in the clouds and look over the railing into what should have been a massive "Grand canyon" but looked to us like a bowl of cotton.  We literally couldn't see anything!  We ate lunch at a nearby picnic stop on the mountain and encountered some foul play......lots of chickens being rowdy that is!  This is a good time to mention the fact that Kauai is overrun with wild chickens.  Because they have no natural predators on Kauai (the other Hawaiian islands controlled their chicken population by introducing the mongoose...but Kauai has not followed suit for fear of endangering their vast population of desirable birds) the chickens run rampant, crowing at all hours of the night and lurking anywhere and everywhere they please.  This particular chickens even had the gall to get up on our lunch table while we were eating to try to steal food!  Keith tried unsuccessfully after lunch to catch one and it was hilarious to watch him run around after them.  We were able to have an amazing view of the Kalalau valley from another overlook point however, thus making the trek up the mountain worthwhile.

At the bottom of the Waimea Canyon lookout....we didn't know yet that there was nothing to see at the top!

Keith and I "on cloud nine." literally!  haha.

Chickens on our picnic table!  (Today's headline reads, "Potato chips stolen from lunching tourists...forest rangers suspect "foul-play." haha.  haha.)

Little did they know one of their cousins had been "oven roasted" and added to my Subway sandwich. 

This isn't even all of them!  It was insane!

View of the Kalalau Valley.

Me at the Kalalau Valley overlook sporting my new Kauai coffee company shirt....it was a bit chilly at that altitude!

Late afternoon we boarded a Holo Holo Charters Catamaran for a 4 or so hour "Sunset Cruise."  The weather (which had promised to be "sunny all day") made a slight shift so our tour was a little grayer than we'd hoped for, but were thrilled to have an amazing whale watching experience!  We saw tons of humpback whales swimming in the waters around our boat.  Everywhere you turned it seemed you either saw a whale or evidence of one as when they come up for air they send out a puff of water and air that looks like a puff of smoke.  They were so graceful as the lazily came to the surface to breathe and slapped their tails on the water.  We saw so many I honestly quit counting.  At one point we could see three whales on the surface at once!  We also cruised down far enough to see the magestic Na'Pali coastline and our captain gave us a brief history of the Hawaiians who lived there as recently as the 1940's.

Me onboard the boat...a tad wet....but loving every moment of it!

We took this picture of the back of a random man so you could get a perspective of how close the whales were coming to the boat!  Within 20 or 30 feet easily!  The captain said it was the best whale watching day he'd had in a long time.

the dorsal fin of a humpback whale coming to the surface.

A whale of a tale! Make that tail! 

Two whales come up at once!  Awesome!

Whew.  I'm exhausted so I'll wrap it up here and head to bed!  I'm so sad that we have to go home tomorrow....but no worries, you'll get one more blog before we depart.  :)  Aloha!