Last weekend we went camping on the beach for the first time. Polihale is the last beach on the west shore reachable by car. It is where the Napali Coast begins. We camped by Queens Pond (top center photo).
It was quite a different experience from camping in the woods. The sand was hard and uncomfortable even with a mat. The waves sounded like the were right outside our tent and I spent most of the night trying to get Carson to sleep through their loud crashing - I was imagining white noise not water pounding the sand just 40-50 feet away. As you can kind of tell by the picture, our tents were pitched right against sand dunes so there wasn't anywhere else to go. But then, who goes camping to get R&R?
Even with all of that, we had a great time!
The same waves that kept me up all night also made for awesome boogie boarding the next morning.
The kids were kids: Emilia slathered sun screen on her face while Carson preferred diving face-first in the ground and covering his with sand.
We saw some rusting metal that looked like a rock sticking up from the sand. It is the only visible part of a WWII tank treads buried there. I didn't take this photo so it's not part of my collage but it really shows how much is buried under the sand. When we were there we could only see the tip.
We were back near Polihale on Saturday. This time we drove up Waimea Canyon and did a little hike with the kids to a lookout point. These are very isolated areas. You not only don't encounter a lot of other people but you also don't see many animals.
Most of our hike was through rich jungle and trees. Yet it was so quiet that when we reached the lookout point we could faintly see but clearly hear goat bleats across the canyon.
