Day 12: Relax day/ Queen’s Bath/ pretend luxury…

Tuesday, June 11

Since we had a long, full day Monday, and more plans in the south of Kauai on Wednesday, the plan for Tuesday was to just basically do whatever we wanted (on the north shore near the condo).

No plans, just a wing-it day.

We took a slow morning (the usual- coffee, tea, patio, enjoy view, I think I worked on a blog post).

We later spent a couple hours at the pool/ hot tub!

Again, we had no real timeline- just hung out as long as we wanted.

Eventually we went back to the condo for lunch.

I had starred several “points of interest” on the north shore, one being Queen’s Bath <1 mile from our place.

Queen’s Bath

I am slightly hesitant to share this, lest someone on the greater interwebs find this post and decide to visit this place irresponsibly. But, it’s not a secret place or anything, so I guess I’ll go ahead. Read on for a few disclaimers.

The thing is, Queen’s Bath can be a very dangerous place. It’s drop dead gorgeous, but also, I read that over 70 people have died in this spot over the years. Yikes.

So, what is it and why did we go to such a scary place??

Well, you know me. I did my research…. Queen’s Bath is basically a set of little coves and tide pools. The issue here is that in the winter specifically, the waves can be very large, and very unpredictable. Even on “calm” days in the winter, this location can experience (huge) unexpected rogue waves that come out of nowhere.

People like to climb all over the rocks and/or attempt to swim here, and unfortunately, many have been washed out to sea or slammed into the rocks and injured (or worse).

The issues have been so bad that local authorities installed a gate and the access trail is literally closed in the winter months. Many people on the travel pages say this place should just be avoided in general, all year. (Apparently many people will do stupid things like climb the fence or access it even when it’s closed.)

Given all of this, I wasn’t really planning for us to go here. I would not be one to climb a fence to access a place that has a sign saying “70 people have died here”. No thank you.

However, I happened to see online that it was OPEN, being June and calm weather. If it’s open, and legal and all, well, then that seemed fair game.

I decided we’d just go scope it out. It did look beautiful in the photos.

The other issue here is the parking situation. There are about… 7? maybe? parking spots. It’s located on the edge of a neighborhood, but there are signs everywhere saying “no parking”, so street parking not an option, either.

Long story short, we fiddled around a while trying to get a spot. After some circling and waiting, we did finally get one! Nice.

The hike down is fairly difficult, also. My mom took about 20 steps and was like, Nope. So she went back to the car to wait and enjoyed a little alone time. 🙂

It’s not super long- maybe a half mile or so?

The trail spits you out to this gorgeous view!

This was a calm day, but even still, the waves were sloshing up some on the rocks. I can definitely see how if people were down standing on the rocks right by the water, bigger waves could absolutely wash up and knock your feet right out.

The only people swimming were several sea turtles!! So cool.

There are several of these smaller coves, one after the other.

Knowing what I knew about the place, I was still a little on edge, despite the calm conditions. The boys went this far and even so I was shouting at them to stay back, stay back! (How do I know if one of these “rogue waves” won’t make an appearance?!)

The actual Queen’s Bath part is this other big, enclosed tide pool. Here there is no actual entry point for water, like the other coves. So this water was still like a pool, for the most part.

Sometimes little waves would slosh over on the far side (we stayed far away from there) and trickle water in. I can see though how in the winter or with rougher conditions, you could really get caught off guard if big waves came crashing over.

It really is an amazing spot, though! I’m glad the conditions were right that we could see it.

Asher wanted to swim. Again, I feel like I have to reiterate- YOU HAVE TO USE EXTRA GOOD JUDGEMENT HERE! Please do not do something stupid because you saw on this blog post that Asher swam here.

We had been there for a long time before he swam, and it was very, very calm. Other people were swimming and had goggles and Asher also went down and swam around and thoroughly verified how deep all the rocks were.

After determining this section was very deep, we let him jump (where some other people had jumped first). But only here, in this one spot we knew was safe.

No one else swam but him. He had fun! Such a unique and beautiful place- I’m really thankful the conditions were right for this to work out!

One quick side story… Some people really are so dumb. There was a family there- a big group, with a 4 year old boy and the dad and mom and like some aunts/ uncles/ mother-in-law, etc. The dad (probably around my age, maybe little younger) was jumping from the rock too.

Well, he decided he wanted his kid to jump. The FOUR YEAR OLD. Now, this wasn’t super high exactly like for Asher’s standards, but there were some rocks protruding below that you had to make sure to clear as you jumped. (No big deal for Asher- it wasn’t very far- but no WAY would I trust a 4 year old to have the coordination and awareness to accurately jump like that!)

They actually went up there and the little boy seemed scared. The dad was like, I can just throw you off if you want so you don’t have to try to jump over the rocks.

OMG. WHAT?!! How stupid can people be?!

I was extremely uncomfortable with this whole plan, and when the little boy hesitated, I couldn’t help myself- I chimed in and said, There’s this lower rock just over here he could jump from instead! (It was basically on the edge of the water- a nice, low rock that would be perfect sized for a kid in water wings to “jump” from.)

Thankfully, the dad agreed that was a better plan and he took him down there. But jeez. I mean, these are the people that end up being statistics!!

(The dad’s personality honestly struck me as one of those “hey guys, hold my beer!” frat-house type of guys that just have a knack for using very poor judgement. Later he was climbing and walking around on the rocks on the far side, where the ocean meets the tide pool…. a bigger wave did come rushing up over the rocks and he almost lost his footing and fell. We left soon after and I was happy to get out of there before I had to witness him get injured or killed somehow!)

Anyway, hopefully it’s clear that: a) I am not recommending you visit Queen’s Bath if the gate is closed or conditions are rough and b) even if it’s open, for heaven’s sake, use your head!!!

But if you can be logical and smart, it’s an awesome place to check out.

1 Hotel Hanalei Bay

After this, we drove just a minute up the street to check out the luxurious 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay. I’d heard they had a nice cafe that sold ice cream with KILLER views of the bay. The boys were up for a treat, and I wanted to see this place, anyway.

They only have valet parking, so we handed off our car and went in.

The hotel oozed luxury. Decorated in a very clean, classy style and all of that.

Unfortunately, the cafe we wanted to visit was only open from 6-2! And it was like, 2:30 I think.

This is the view!! Amazing. (*We ended up coming back a different day for morning coffee/ tea. ;))

We then stumbled across a big bar/ restaurant with equally great views, but that one said it didn’t open until 5! What the heck. No place for an ice cream or drink between 2-5? That didn’t seem right…

As we wandered around looking a little lost (I’m sure no one could guess we weren’t staying there…lol), I asked the concierge if there was any other place open.

She said, yes! The pool bar. Aha! Perfect. (I clarified probably very unnecessarily that we weren’t actually staying there, and was that okay? She said, yep! No problem. We just couldn’t use the pool, but the pool bar was open to public.)

We poked around and found the pool.

We got some drinks and Ivan took the boys to the ice cream stand on the other side of the pool.

Then we just relaxed and pretended for an hour that we were staying at a $1,300/night hotel!

Just for fun, I pulled out my phone and went to their website. I put in as if I wanted to book a room for that night, for 2 people, just to see if it was in my price range.

It was not. 🤣🤣

Here’s a screenshot from my phone. Note that this is for a “mountain view” room (NOT even an ocean view!), and is for only 2 people (what if you needed multiple rooms, like for a family of 5?!).

Oh, and it’s on sale!! lol.

Bonkers. Not sure who pays those prices, but it’s not us, that’s for sure. 😳

We finished up our relaxing drink and Ivan and I moseyed down to the beach, just to look.

This was a nice place to stop for a drink! Really beautiful grounds.

Got the car from the valet and I said, “Ok, what do you want to do now?” The boys wanted to go back to Kalihiwai Beach, where they’d had so much fun on Sunday.

Sounds good, let’s go! It’s a no-plans day.

The boys swam again and the rest of us relaxed. Some people napped, and I read for a while.

This beach also has a river on one side, so they checked out the little rope swing here, too. The first rope swing at the beach where they bridge jumped was much better, though.

All in all, a very great day! Super relaxing and chill.

I’ll call this day a perfect Vacation Sandwich:

• lazy morning/ pool time
• exploring/ activity (Queen’s Bath)
• happy hour w/ a view
• relaxing beach time

Eventually we went back and all showered etc before heading into Hanalei for dinner.

We ate at this upstairs restaurant with mountain views, called The Terrace, though it was nearly dark by the time we got there.

We had a nice dinner! We all agreed we probably wouldn’t really recommend this place though- the food was good, but not outstanding, and our server was fine, but not that great, either. Some of the portion sizes were a bit small, too. (My dad’s fish entree, our ceviche…).

I did like the vibe of the place, however. We ate fairly late, closer to closing time, so it was pretty quiet by that point.

And that was our Tuesday.

I was very pleased that I had planned to split up our “activity” days. It was nice to have this open, flexible day in between our two south shore days.

Up next, Wednesday- another excursion day!

Also, at this point I started to feel for the first time that sensation of the trip starting to wind down. Only Wednesday… Thursday…. Friday left before our flight home already on Saturday! Vacations always seem to pick up speed during the second week for me, unfortunately.