Monday, June 10
Monday was our first “excursion day” on Kauai! We were staying on the north shore, but had booked a private plane tour out of Lihue and also wanted to take advantage of being more on the south shore to also visit Waimea Canyon.
Here, for a little reference, here’s a map:
Airport = Lihue
Our condo= Princeville
Waimea Canyon= near Waimea
The popular north shore town of Hanalei (not shown) is about 10 minutes west of Princeville.
From Princeville to Waimea Canyon it’s at least a 1 hour 30 minute drive. To Lihue from Princeville, about 50 minutes.
Our tour was scheduled for 11:00 and we had to arrive by 10:30, so we set out around 9:30. (After coffee, tea and breakfast at the condo and some morning patio time.)
Airplane Tour
We arrived with time to spare and got checked in. They had to reverify the body weights we had submitted (there are limits to how much the group of 6 can weigh- fortunately we were well under it- and they also assign seats based on the various weights.)
Many people do helicopter tours in Kauai (or Hawaii in general) but we opted for the 6 seater plane, in part because I read the safety statistics were better in a plane vs a helicopter… (The helicopters do get much lower and fly more in and among the mountains, which I am sure is very cool. But I also learned of a local Madison couple who died a few years back after their helicopter in Kauai blew into the side of the mountain. After I heard that, well, I couldn’t really, um, un-learn that. 😬)
Also, I read that people can have more issues with motion sickness in the choppers vs the planes. None of us had a documented history of motion sickness (….yet…..) but my mom suffers from some vertigo issues at times and I also just feel queasy more often than I used to when on car rides, etc. So plane seemed better.
(*My discrete foreshadowing in this post may give away that this plan did not work out quite as I’d hoped.)
Anyway, here we are excited and boarding our little plane!
I had never been in such a little plane before! I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect.
My dad was assigned co-pilot position (based on his weight, I’m sure, but it was actually perfect because back in his younger days my dad had his recreational pilot’s license and he used to fly himself and my mom around!! He hasn’t flown in at least 40+ years now (at least since I was born?) but I am sure this brought back fun memories.)
It was cool to hear the control towers and stuff over the headsets! The pilot was awesome- super friendly and personable and gave us constant info all throughout the tour.
And we’re off…
The main reason to do an air tour in Kauai is to see the Napali coast which spans the whole western side of the island. It’s completely impassable and can really only be seen by air or on a boat tour up the coast. (Or a few little glimpses from a couple hiking trails, but there are no roads etc up there.)
However, even the immediate views of the southeastern side of the island were beautiful!
Kauai is SO GREEN!!
Here you can see some of the plane interior and how it looked from way up there:
One super cool thing to see from the air is Jurassic Falls. Anyone remember the big waterfall at the beginning of Jurassic Park? Where they land the helicopter to go see Jurassic Park?
Well, that’s this waterfall! Over 90% of the original Jurassic Park was filmed on Kauai.
Remember the dramatic entrance scene where the main character paleontologists Alan and Ellie fly out there with John? I definitely did!
This was awesome to see in real life, even from a distance.
Next we flew over towards Waimea Canyon. So far it was really quite smooth flying, but around this point I started feeling a few sensations of “whoa, my stomach is turning just a little….”.
The pilot said sometimes there are a few wind gusts near the canyon so I hoped that would go away after we passed the canyon.
They had stocked the plane with motion sickness bags and a little cooler with ginger ale and mints and ginger chews. (When the assistant was getting us situated in the plane and going over all of this stuff, I’ll admit I got a little nervous and asked, “umm… is it common for people to get sick?” The pilot waved his hand like “so-so” and said sort of, that maybe a couple times per week someone got sick.
Oh. Great.
I grabbed a ginger chew and tried not to think about it and tried to focus on the gorgeous canyon below us.
This was INCREDIBLE.
They call this canyon the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific”. It’s amazing.
Next up would be the long-awaited Napali Coast. By this point, I was feeling pretty good again! Seemed like the ginger chew helped, phew.
The Napali Coast was every bit as gorgeous as I had hoped, and then some.
He got us up pretty close- WOWWWWWW!!!! This place is unreal!!! I felt like I needed to pinch myself that I was actually seeing this. I kept having thoughts like, “I am so, so lucky to see things like this with my own eyes in my lifetime!” Seriously, I feel so grateful for this.
This is a nice clear one! The pilot said basically the only way you can get to that beach is by jumping out of a plane, lol!
We circled around this area for quite a while. About 3/4 of the way through this portion I started to feel a little iffy again. In hindsight I should have probably downed another ginger chew or cracked a ginger ale. I thought I was okay though… it seemed mild enough.
Tried to ignore the feelings and just kept on enjoying the views (and taking my pictures)…
Well, when we were kind of almost getting to the end of the tour (maybe 10-15 minutes left), it all of a sudden just got so hot on that plane!! I felt this serious, stifling heat wave wash over me and I semi-frantically tried to adjust the air vent over me. About 2 seconds after that, I semi-frantically reached for my motion sickness bag.
I’ll leave it at that. Hahaha.
Fortunately, it came on quickly and after that I was pretty much fine. (I felt a little on edge the rest of the time (“what if it comes back!?”) but we landed pretty soon after that anyway.
I was able to generally enjoy the remainder of the tour. lol.
Circling over Wailua Falls, pretty close to the airport:
Back on land! Our tour lasted an hour.
I was a little bummed this happened!!! I was super excited about this tour and this does put just a little damper on my memory of this now.
I mean, not really- most of it was great and the views were truly once-in-a-lifetime type views. I think I’m just more annoyed that I apparently have motion sickness issues now?! Hmph. Guess next time I’ll make sure to pack some Dramamine…
Kauai Beer Company
It was after 12 by the time we got back. The plan was to take advantage of being on the southern coast and continue over to Waimea Canyon. It was still almost another hour drive, though.
So, we stopped off for a quick lunch at Kauai Beer Company.
This was a really cool, funky little brewery!
I felt much better but just a tiny bit “off”, so I just got a soda and a grilled cheese sandwich from the kids menu. (Was actually incredibly delicious!)
I liked this ALOHA sign in the park in front of where we parked the car:
Drive to Waimea Canyon
After a very lovely lunch, we hit the road towards Waimea.
We pulled off for this great lookout spot:
And I also wanted to do a quick detour to drive through teeny tiny Hanapepe, which is the home of Lilo and Stitch!
Waimea Canyon
The drive was longer than I thought, because once we finally got to the State Park, we had to take a LONG winding road up the mountains until we actually could see any of the canyon.
Red Dirt Falls
This red dirt is famous in Kauai. Pulled over for a quick pic of “Red Dirt Falls”!
Here the boys did a little scramble-detour up the rocks:
Ethan sent me what was at the top. 😊
Kept winding and winding up the road…. (Fortunately no car sickness occurred, hehe.)
Made it eventually to the first lookout! Amazing!
This is 100% worth the drive out to see. It’s just gorgeous.
There are some hiking trails within the park, but I had planned to just stick to the car route (various lookout points scattered throughout) due to really only having a couple hours in the afternoon for this. Some people devote a whole day to Waimea Canyon, though!
The red rock and various shades of green and the blue sky… love.
This does all take a good while to drive, and it is really kind of inconveniently located on that far west side of the island. So just make sure to take that all into account if you visit.
DO make sure to go all the way to the end, though! Near the end of the road there is this drop dead gorgeous lookout where you can actually see part of the Napali Coast.
Seriously. This is just insane.
Absolutely beautiful. (Running out of synonyms for “beautiful”…. gorgeous… stunning… incredible….)
I’d say it was nearing 5 pm by the time we finished seeing Waimea Canyon State Park. Unfortunately, we now had quite a long drive back alll the way up to Princeville (~1.5-2 hours).
We made a quick game plan to drive back to Lihue, stop at the Walmart (no big box stores up on north shore), grab some groceries, drive back to Princeville hopefully before dark, eat dinner at the condo and then have a movie night and watch Jurassic Park!
It had been a long day and none of us really wanted to go sit in another restaurant at this point, anyway.
It did get rather late by the time we got back, but we broiled hot dogs in the oven (served with onion and jalapeños, yummy…) and ate potato chips and some of our leftover cheese and crackers, etc. Ivan made some fancy bacon wrapped hot dogs too.
We then just watched the first half of Jurassic Park! (Saved other half for a different night.) So fun. I hadn’t seen that movie in YEARS, nor had my parents. It’s a lot more intense than I remembered! It was cool to see all the scenery and be like.. it’s Kauai!! 😃
What a day! The sheer amount of incredible scenery that we saw in just one day was almost a little hard for me to process. (That’s why I love doing these blogs… I feel like I’m sort of sifting through and compartmentalizing all the memories here now.)
Anyone else ever have issues with motion sickness?!
GRATEFUL KAE 
I’ve tried helicopter tour once, 14 years ago, and didn’t feel motion sickness. But maybe it has to do with the elevation? Not sure. Looks so cool though, must cost 💲!!! Worth doing it once for sure. I did out of prize, didn’t have to pay myself. And it was in cairns.
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The plane tour was actually way more reasonably priced than the helicopter tours! Especially since we had a group of 6- we were able to essentially charter the plane at a flat rate which worked out to be a way better deal.
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Those views!!! How gorgeous!!! But what a bummer that you got sick! I did a helicopter ride in New Zealand on the day when we bungee jumped and thought it was so cool and fun. I have not been on a tiny plane like the one you were on. I do get car sick quite often in cars these days. I am fine if I am in the front seat but you don’t ride in the front seat of an Uber so most work trips feature some period of nausea. I should try getting some ginger chews to see if that helps. I think as we get older we are more sensitive to motion sickness it seems.
I have never seen Jurassic Park! I should watch it sometime!
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Yeah, try the ginger chews! It really did seem to help. They also had mint lifesavers and my mom said she got just a tad queasy and she ate one of those and it knocked it out right away. Maybe you could keep some of both in your purse for your Uber rides.
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Kae, I am absolutely loving reliving Kauai through your family’s trip! We went with our kids in 2019. Waimea Canyon was definitely a highlight, as were all the north shore beaches. Although when we went in 2019 a lot of the north shore beaches (Haena State Park, etc.) were still closed due to devastating floods a year earlier so we missed some of the good spots. Your pictures of the Napali Coast are OUT OF THIS WORLD. Before my husband and I met, he went to Kauai and did the Kalalua Trail, which is (I believe) the only way you can access the Napali Coast on foot–you hike 11 miles one way, camp out on the beach overnight, then hike 11 miles back. He said the hike was his favorite of his entire life, although also the most terrifying (there is a lot of exposed cliff/slippery trail on the downhill leg the first day!). Probably not something I will ever get to experience, and certainly we did not do that when we went with our kids, but it sounds epic. Maybe I need to go back to Kauai and do the plane tour so i can see the coast that way! Also, I think if you have motion sickness from a small plane that doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily struggle with motion sickness in other contexts so i think you’re probably okay 🙂
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It’s just crazy gorgeous! Glad you can relive it a little bit through my posts! 🙂
We opted to not do Haena State Park either… you have to reserve a spot in advance now and apparently it’s nearly impossible to get a parking reservation. So the only other option is a $35/per person shuttle ride (which also sell out…). I figured my parents wouldn’t want to do part of that hike (the 4 of us wouldn’t have done the whole thing but maybe part) and I wasn’t convinced the state park beach would be that different from the other north shore beaches! Just seemed complicated and like a potentially an unnecessary expense. I would have liked to hike to that waterfall there though! I’ve heard even the first portion can be challenging with stream crossings etc. Our airplane pilot talked about the full hike on our tour and said it is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 most dangerous hikes in the WORLD!
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Wow what a stunning place Kuaui is – those photos are out of this world (no wonder Jurassic park was filmed there. I DO get motion sickness, thankfully I never actually throw up, but I’ll feel nauseous and have to stare out a window to manage it, it’s very tiresome, Usually on smaller boats is the worst (so I’ll often avoid them on holidays unless it’s a flat ocean), but I sometimes get it on planes if they have turbulence, or cars on windy roads (never driving though!). If you were in the front of the plane you would have probably been fine. Anyway I’m glad it was only a small part of your flight, and you got to enjoy the rest!
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I wondered that about the front vs back of the plane too! I haven’t been on too many smaller boats really lately, but I did consider doing a Napali boat tour instead of the plane but feared that would be even worse! (They are also long- like 3+ hours and I thought oof that would be a long time to be nauseous….)
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I remember your post about the cost of this trip and how you were trying to understand what other people pay for lavish vacations and that you were ok to choose a “less nice” accommodation in favor of experiences… well let me tell you, from an outside perspective, it looks like you’re GETTING IT ALL. Your accommodations (including views!) look amazing and you’re doing all the tours and experiences, like this airplane tour. Wow. The landscape is just stunning.
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Oh, I agree- I did absolutely work it out and planned it such that I really feel we “got it all” too!! We had such an amazing trip. That being said, this trip definitely was probably the most expensive trip we’ve ever taken. (Just got home and have yet to tally up every last expense, but definitely $$.) We didn’t skimp and did a lot of cool activities and excursions etc. But THAT being said, I still don’t feel like we did this trip up to the level that some people must in Hawaii. I mean I was absolutely thrilled with both of our lodging choices and the things we did. But for example, I know people could spend our WAY way more than we did in lodging, too. We stopped for a drink at this 5 star hotel in Kauai and I went to the website pretending I wanted to book a single night. For 2 people with a Mountain View (not even ocean view!) and 1 King bed, it gave me a total of $1300 for one night, on sale!! I mean. Who pays for stuff like that?!?! For 7 nights that would be $9100 in hotel costs alone? To be honest, that just seems stupid. Especially when I saw how great and perfectly suitable both of our places were (which were both still more expensive than we typically spend on lodging but not like “$1300/night for only 2 people” expensive!) I feel like anyone spending that much on hotel is literally just wasting their money, no matter how nice the place is. There are other places to be enjoyed equally that are still awesome that do not cost that much! (Not to mention- what if you need a room for a family of 4 (or more) at that hotel!)
The airplane tour we did was WAY cheaper than the helicopter tours, too. Most helicopter tours I looked at were like $250-350 per PERSON. I think we only paid $715 for our whole group of 6 on the plane! (Obviously worked out well since we had a group of 6 and that’s the max that can fit in a plane. Would have been the same price for 3, 4, 5 etc if we wanted the private plane so that wouldn’t have been as good of a deal for less than 6 people.) The cost was another reason I opted for the plane over the helicopter!
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I totally get it. Some of the hotel prices are literally insane and you wonder what kind of people would spend that much money per night!
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Hi Kae! Long time reader, rare commenter ☺️. I’m really enjoying following along your Hawaii recap! I live relatively close to Hawaii so have been fortunate enough to have been there many times over the years but have never been to Kauai.
I wonder if you got sick because you were trying to take photos. I only get motion sick if I’m trying to look at something static (read, look at a camera to take photos). I learned about the photo one on the Road to Hana on Maui. Had to pull over 🤢 and then stop taking photos!
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Ooh how lucky to be able to get to Hawaii often! So glad you’ve been enjoying the recaps! I know I will love looking back on them one day.
That’s an interesting thought about the photo thing! I never thought of that. Very possible- I definitely was taking a lot of photos. I also wonder if I sort of “manifested” it because I had heard of people getting sick and was a little anxious about it before the flight…. so maybe I somehow then brought it upon myself. Hahah.
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Absolutely beautiful photos. Your pictures are gorgeous and I can imagine how much better it is in real life. You guys look like you are having an amazing time and it shows that you put a lot of thought and research into the trip. I’ve never had a problem with air or car sickness, except when I was pregnant. I would have loved to take the helicopter trip around the island. I’m seriously enjoying your vacation vicariously. Thank you so much for sharing.
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Thanks for the message!! Really, I appreciate hearing that some people enjoy the travel posts. I know they are ridiculously long and detailed so I always worry they might be sort of a long, boring turn off to some people. I love writing them though, so I’m happy to know they’re interesting to some! 🙂
I do put a lot of effort and thought into our trips and fortunately it seems like it typically pays off!
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Kae, these photos are incredible!!!!! And… yes, I unfortunately do have a problem with motion sickness. On Friday I actually got incredibly nauseous in the car- my husband was driving and I was texting back and forth with my daughter- we were on our way to pick her up- and I guess I looked at my phone too much. Meanwhile my son was in the back seat READING A BOOK. I could NEVER!!!!! Anyway, I’m making a mental note to never take a helicopter tour, and possibly not a small plane tour either, unfortunately. Those views are incredible though.
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Oh yuck! I try to avoid much time on my phone too when I’m in the car. I used to read in the car all the time when I was younger! But I think it might make feel yucky now too. Usually in the car I really only have trouble on winding or curvy roads.
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Just another reader (from far away in New Zealand) chiming in to say how much I’m enjoying your holiday posts. I love reading about how people spend their days on holidays and it’s all the little details that make it interesting – so much more engaging than all the ‘10 things to do in …’ type posts which is all that ever seems to come up when I google for blog posts on destinations these days. Would love to visit Hawaii one days, although (like you mentioned in a post) some of the scenery doesn’t look that dissimilar from the Abel Tasman National Park where we go to camp most summers in NZ – a lot warmer though I bet! Thanks so much for sharing it with us.
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New Zealand!!!! OH I’m coming to visit you asap!! Haha. I want to go there so badly. Yes, I know what you mean about the typical travel posts. Actually my biggest pet peeve with those is that so many seem to be heavily sponsored, and there are often so many ads and pop ups that I can barely even read the content… So glad you have enjoyed these! Not sure specifically about New Zealand, but it seems there are a lot of Australian tourists who visit Hawaii. Which I suppose makes sense, given the location!
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I get car sick if I’m in the back (especially if it’s twisty and turny) and if I try to look down/read even in the front seat. My father gets really car sick if he is anywhere but the driver’s seat. I get some motion sickness on a boat as well. When we were looking at accommodation options for Portugal, I saw this cute ship that you can rent to sleep on…and then I read the reviews and people said IF YOU GET AT ALL SEASICK, don’t pick this place. Ha.
Gorgeous views, though I’m sorry you threw up. That is the worst, and doing it in front of other people – regardless of being discreet – is just no fun. BUT, I would say 100% worth it for that experience.
An epic trip ❤
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Ahh, I can’t imagine having to SLEEP on a boat if I were suffering from motion sickness! How terrible! I’ve never slept on a smaller boat- just cruise ships, but those are so large you can often not even tell if you’re moving or not!
And yes, I was actually very glad that I was in the last row so it was as discreet as possible. lol! (I also made time to quickly get my headset/ microphone out of the way so as to not broadcast that over the radio! haha.)
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Ugh. I’ll join in on the unpredictably motion sick. I got sick after riding a random roller coaster once, but never again. I was really motion sick in the back of a minivan once, but never again. I have been sick twice on small boats, but also been on small boats for hours and hours with no side effects. I hate the unpredictable nature of it.
I don’t think I’d enjoy the plane ride (I have a serious fear of heights), but the views are spectacular and I love that you shared all those photos with us!
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I’m okay with heights, but apparently just not the motion part! That’s so annoying about you having just intermittent motion sickness! Strange, too, isn’t it? I wonder why that is. In my case, I feel like it’s something that has gotten progressively worse as I’ve gotten older- though still only in certain situations. Like I’m normally fine in the car but on a twisty, turvy road, or even if Ivan swings around a roundabout too quickly, I have noticed that I don’t feel well. When we drove from Gatlinburg to Asheville in March on all the winding roads, I didn’t have a major problem in the moment, but by the end I just felt really off. Kind of queasy and no appetite for dinner and a little headache! After an hour or so it subsided.
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