Day 14: awesome day! Morning walk, Hideaway Beach, mini-golf, Tunnels, pizza + sunset views

Thursday, June 13

These last two days, Thursday and Friday, were designed to be pretty go-with-the-flow. Main objective: explore + enjoy.

One thing on my personal “wants” list was to walk to that pretty 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay for coffee/ tea at that pretty coffee shop one morning.

I enjoy walking at home in the mornings, and this place was only about 1.1 miles from our condo. Thought this would be a nice little outing! Ivan and my dad were also interested in joining me.

We planned to go fairly early, so I think the boys were a quick “no” when I mentioned it the night before. Oh well… their loss! (We had a really nice time and Ivan regretted it and said we should have made them come along… they can sleep in at home! But too late now.)

We set out about 7:30, so not crazy early, just reasonably early. I was up extra early for some reason and did some blog stuff on the patio for a while first.

The walk was so, so pretty!!! And very easy. From our condo, there were sidewalks and/or running paths all along a golf course and then down a quiet street to the hotel.

The end part runs along the ocean. Gorgeous views. I kept thinking how SHU would love to be running all around here! 😉

Neighbors at 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay

The cafe is called “Neighbors”. Which is cute. I found it funny there were a decent number of people sitting at these indoor tables….

Because the outdoor patio has these views!

Ivan bought this apple danish to share. He had coffee, my dad and I had tea.

It’s a large cafe and there were quite a lot of people out there enjoying the views, and rightfully so. There were regular tables, like ours, but also several more lounge type chairs. I could have been very, very happy to just sit one of those chairs basically all day.

You’re definitely paying for the view here. The prices are high for a coffee shop. Like $18-20 for a breakfast burrito or a sandwich, $9-10 for a latte, $7-10 for a cookie or muffin, $16+ for a smoothie. My plain black tea was a steal at just $6! lol.

This was really nice though! We lingered quite a long time. It was just too pretty for words.

Eventually we figured we should move on.

Hideaway Beach

Just up the street from the hotel is Hideaway Beach. It’s a little tiny beach, but looked gorgeous. We tried to swing by the other day, but we had the car and there was nowhere to park. I’d filed it away to stop back whenever we walked to the coffee shop, since we’d go right past it anyway.

This is a super cool little stop! There is a short but STEEP hike down. It’s really not very difficult though because they’ve recently added these rope handles. Helped a ton.

It’s quick though- maybe 10 minutes down.

And then… this!

It was only ~9:30 or so, so the beach was pretty quiet. (All 8 parking spots were full, though! So it was good we had walked.)

It is a BEAUTIFUL spot! A few people were snorkeling around. Looking back on these now, I’m a little bummed we didn’t go back another time. If we’d had more days, I think I would have liked to walk over there early with my book and just hang out for a few hours.

Unfortunately, we weren’t really prepared to “stay”- no chairs or towels or anything. We basically just enjoyed the views for a bit and then headed out. 😦

We had wanted to stop back another time with the boys, too, but with the whole parking situation, it’s not an easy place to just swing by.

The hike back up….

Then we walked back to the condo! Nice, flat, easy. Didn’t take too long from there.

The path cuts through the golf course and it’s a very lovely spot.

Arriving back to our condo! This is the entrance- ours was nestled down inside the complex.

Kauai Miniature Golf and Botanical Garden

On our way into town last Saturday, we drove by a mini golf. Someone from the BOBW Patreon group had actually told me about this place, too, so it was already on my list.

Asher specifically really wanted to mini-golf. Originally I thought it would be a nice evening thing to do, but per the website, they recommend making reservations, though walk-ins are accepted as able. It didn’t look like you could reserve a time for at night, though! But yet, it said the “wait list” for evening walk-ins closed at 3 pm…? I don’t know, it didn’t totally add up.

I didn’t feel like figuring it out, and besides, many restaurants close up a bit earlier here.

So we decided to just go during the day and hope we could walk in at a less busy time. After our walk, we kind of regrouped for a while and then gathered everyone else and drove the ~15 minutes to the mini golf place.

This is a GREAT mini golf course! It’s actually part mini-golf, part botanical garden (with detailed signage and explanations of the plants and even history of the island all over).

It’s (of course) rather pricey for mini golf- around $20/person. But it’s worth it! We had a wonderful time here. It’s just beautiful.

Luckily, it wasn’t overly busy, either. Extremely pleasant. And just partly cloudy so we didn’t melt in the heat.

We all played and Ivan kept score. I was apparently a bit rusty, but at least I beat my mom. LOL.

We all had a lot of fun. 🙂 I’d definitely recommend a stop here, especially if traveling to Kauai with kids. Like I said, it’s certainly not your average mini-golf course. Way better.

We had a slight game delay due to a baby chick crossing:

Grandma golfing…. 🙂

This was a fun hole! You have to shoot it over that big gap or it falls in the water.

Somehow, both Asher and my dad both got holes-in-ones here!!!

I got zero holes-in-one, but I did get a score of “2” on a few holes… (And also some “6s”, so, there you go. hahaha.)

Loved the tropical plants and scenery everywhere! So good.

Ethan fetching someone’s ball…

This is located inside a community park, and we learned that there is also a small bar/ grill, a cool looking playground, and they often have live music! Would have been a great place to stop back if we’d had more time. They also host fire dinner shows there certain nights! (But we already did the luau. This one seems a bit more local/intimate/ smaller so might have still been cool to check out.)

Lunch

It was maybe 1-1:30 by the time we finished, so we drove back to the condo for lunch.

We ate up some leftover sandwich stuff, hot dogs, etc and just cooled off for a while.

A little later, we gathered up our beach stuff and drove ~20 minutes along the north shore to basically the farthest beach you can access (before it turns into a timed entry/reservation-only state park).

Tunnels Beach

Tunnels was on my “must do” list.

First, because it looked like one of the most gorgeous spots on the island.

And second, because it was the actual beach where surfer girl and Kauai-native Bethany Hamilton got her arm eaten off by a shark years ago. (She is the basis of the 2011 movie Soul Surfer which we’ve seen several times. It’s a great family movie! Highly recommend for kids too- it’s rated PG. The shark attack scene is not gruesome or anything- yes, a bit “exciting” for a short while, but the whole story and message of grit, overcoming difficult situations, persistence, etc is a great one and very inspiring. Also- fabulous scenery of Hawaii throughout entire movie.)

This looks like it could have been part of a movie cover, but nope! Just my iphone photo:

This beach is AMAZING. Do not miss it if you’re in Kauai! It’s so beautiful!!

Parking can be an issue here, too, but we luckily found a spot in the very small lot. (You often just have to wait a few minutes and if you’re lucky, someone will leave.) Otherwise, there is more parking up the road at Haena Beach Park if you’re willing to walk ~10 minutes.

Not sure if it was our late afternoon time slot, or the parking being a turn-off, but it wasn’t busy here at all! There were a handful of people scattered about, but really very quiet.

Some of this beach is rocky and/or has corral, so you have to pay attention to that. There are also some huge boulders like IN the water in certain spots! So this might not be the best for little ones to spend a whole day swimming.

But the boys found a good spot in between that worked for some body surfing. One area of the beach seemed especially good for snorkeling. A few brave people (who apparently didn’t see Soul Surfer) went way out super super far (like, so far we could barely see them!!! 😳) and were surfing. Eek.

It is an incredible spot.

Ivan and my parents relaxed on chairs, the boys swam, and I ended up wandering way down to the far end of the beach (to the green part below).

I sat on some rocks for a bit. It was very peaceful.

Trying to capture the bright green mountain- it was a bit hard sometimes with the lighting! But in person it was spectacular.

After my walk, Ivan and I swam for a long time. The water temp was slightly cool when we got in, but then felt really good and the water was calm and nice for just floating and swimming around where we were. The boys were farther down and seemed to have more waves over there for some reason.

Eventually, the sun started to get lower in the sky, so we (ahem, I) tried for some family pics. Others were not quite as enthusiastic, but they begrudgingly agreed.

It would have been nice to stay until sunset, but it was one of those where the sun was going to drop behind a small band of clouds, anyway.

We packed up and Asher tried out the tree swing. Love the sky in this photo!

Heading out the short trail to the parking lot:

Dinner- Wiki Pizza

Back in the car, we had a moment of trying to figure out what to do next. We obviously needed to get dinner- our grocery supply of any “real” food was low.

But I was wearing a wet swimsuit over my now-damp shorts. I did have a tank top along and my cover up blouse at least. The boys had all thought ahead and brought a full change of clothes.

Ivan didn’t want to go back to the condo because it was both out of the way and also, if I showered and all of that…it would take forever.

So finally I decided I was dry enough and anyway, it’s Hawaii and people are used to sand-covered toes and stuff 24/7 here.

The boys wanted pizza and wanted to go back where we went the first night. Ivan wanted to try something new…. I found another place on Google Maps that had great reviews, but the website kind of looked like maybe it was just a quick take out place. The logo looked very amateur, or sort of like a Papa Johns style thing.

Some reviews said they had dine-in tables though, so we decided to just go check it out. If it wasn’t good, we’d go to the other place.

Turns out it was located inside the Hanalei Bay Resort! Which turned out to be the most gorgeous grounds ever!

Pulling up, I was a little nervous I was going to be severely underdressed (as I brushed sand off my legs as the valet guy approached…) but fortunately, this resort is actually quite casual, despite how the grounds look.

I ran down to clean up some in the bathroom- heading back up to the restaurant! So pretty!!

The pizza restaurant was very family friendly (see families with young kids below!) and no one batted an eye at my baseball cap and sandy legs.

We managed to get a table with a KILLER view.

The pizza was excellent too!

I was relieved that we ended up trying this place instead of going back to the other pizza place. (I mean, that was good too, but these views were incredible and this was a fun experience.) I think they definitely need to update their website, though! We almost missed this place and it was a great find.

Back at the condo, I took advantage of still having my swimsuit on and hit the hot tub for a bit.

I loved this day! Perfect mix of some family fun and gorgeous sights + a side of relaxation.

And just like that… we were on to our LAST full day in Hawaii!! Crazy!!