Not being one to hang around on beaches for very long, I woke up early, packed up my stuff and headed up into Kokee State Park for a day of muddy hiking and exploring. I have to say that up until this point, I was not all that impressed with Kauai. I hadn’t really seen anything on Kauai that I hadn’t already seen on The Big Island. Kokee State Park was definitely different, and really quite spectacular. 4000 feet up in a rain forest, Kokee State Park had lots of nice hiking trails, a grand canyon, and a spectacular view out over The Kalalau Valley, where the Na Pali Trail ends up.
Although the canyon wasn’t nearly as big as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, it was much greener and very beautiful. And while the region was known for its persistent rain, I happened to luck out and see the Na Pali cliffs overlook with anything but deep blue sky. This place even had really nice individual campsites, carved out of the rainforest undergrowth. The only problem I ran into was with the jungle chickens and roosters (known as Moa) that insisted on cock-a-doodle-doing all night long. The Moa were introduced by Polynesian visitors ions ago and have been removed from all the other Hawaiian Islands but this one.
