no internet for 10 days, not entirely a bad thing, beach fun and cool hikes to great views even for a sissy hiker like me. i wonder if this happens to other people when they visit a place inhabited by similar people to where they live. the exact people were different of course but the same kind of folks that i see at clint's coffee shop in breck, i could give the people their breckenridge parallel, like when i saw dazed and confused the first time, we all knew that person in high school or college who had simlar traits and flavor. hanging out in hanalei, visiting the coffee shop and seeing the locals made the trip seem closer to home. the 80 dergree weather every day changed that view a bit but at the same time it was pretty cool to have a sense of belonging while visiting a new place. in the coming days i'll write about specific things but right now i'm still gathering my thoughts on the whole trip. jet lag hurts the thought processes! the trip was really cool, organic food and fresh fish, body surfing, and cliff jumping, light houses, steep hikes...kauai has it all. maybe next year when we go back we can rent a house and travel with friends. the peaks were so green, all the way up and very vertical, i guess in geologic time they are pretty new. when we had a big rain storm there were waterfalls in every little valley looking at them from 5 miles away. then the wind storm that followed had a ton of trees knocked over and mess all over the island. no coffee that day b/c the power was out. walking on the trails and looking at the plants and little lizards-no snakes on kauai so if you have ophidiophobia this is the place for you-and flowers all over the island made me feel like i was in a giant arboretum. we visited one in connecticut in midfall a couple years ago, amazing what you see when they let a woodsy area go into it's natural state and just maintain some trails without messing it up with over doing the good stuff, just let the woods be woods! the kauai trails had varied traffic from the much used kalalau trail to the less popular ones whose names aren't even printed. the less traveled trails more fun than the super popular ones. more later