Travelling from Kauai to Napa

I wasn't going to do a post until Napa... but there were a few things I wanted to remember... so I am sticking in an extra post 😀

First... the lightning storm in Kauai on our last night. Although the weather forecast said lightning on several occasions while we were in Kauai, this was the first time it actually happened. At first we thought it was the flash of someone's camera taking a photo in the dark, but then we realized it was lightning. Of course we hurried out on to the balcony to watch it! We needn't have hurried... the storm lasted nine hours. NINE HOURS! I have never seen a lightning storm go on that long! Along with the thunder and lightning came torrential tropical rain... not the kind of incessant rain you get in Victoria in the winter, but the fast, heavy kind of rain. FOR NINE HOURS!

I have never seen a tropical rainstorm last that long! The rain started around 9:00, and at 10:30 we got an automated phone call warning us of flash floods! I didn't personally experience the flash floods... or even know if anyone did... let's just say I was happy to be up on the third floor in my warm condo. I wouldn't have wanted to be camping that night!

We had to check out of our condo at 10:00 AM, even though our flight wasn't until the evening. We figured we'd check out a few things, and then head to the airport.

The first place we went was back to Wailua Falls. If you recall, we went here on my birthday and it looked pretty like this...

Well this morning after the rainstorm it looked like this!!!

Crazy, right?!?!

After visiting the falls, we headed to Duke's at Kalapaki Beach for lunch. This was listed as the third best beach on the East side of the island after Lydgate and Kealia. I wasn't particularly impressed, and would definitely recommend the other two over Kalapaki. The benefit of this beach is that there is a hotel, shops, and restaurants right at the beach... probably good if you don't have a car!

Our lunch at Duke's was quite nice. I enjoyed one final lava flow before heading off to the airport. We both agreed four weeks was a perfect amount of time to spend in Kauai... we actually felt like we were living there. We're also very aware of how lucky we are to have four weeks to spend in Kauai 😀

Our flights were uneventful and we arrived at LAX at 4:30 in the morning. Neither of us slept much... although I slept more than Steve... and we didn't sleep much during the lightning storm the night before... so we were pretty tired.

We had left our car in a lot near LAX. We were instructed to phone the place we left the car when we had collected our baggage. This is not as easy as it seems as we weren't traveling with a phone. We managed to get a wifi signal and let them know we were waiting at terminal 7. She assured Steve she was sending the shuttle right away.

We waited a REALLY long time. Numerous shuttles went by multiple times... but not ours. After about 45 minutes we agreed to try phoning again... but for some reason couldn't get a good enough wifi signal to connect a phone call. Finally, I found pay phones... they were right there... I think I was just too tired to see them! (Did you know pay phones cost 50 cents now? Probably not, since normal people have their own phones!) Anyway, she assured me the shuttle would be there "shortly".

It finally arrived. We were surprised when we got in the shuttle to see that we were in some sort of party bus... this is definitely not the shuttle we had when they took us to the airport. We were both too tired to do anything but stare at the craziness of this being an airport shuttle...

We finally arrived at our car around 6:00, and set off for Napa. Somehow Steve managed to stay awake the whole time, and we arrived safely in Napa at about 3:00 in the afternoon!