Alakai Swamp

Today we were heading up the hill to hike the Alakai Swamp trail. This trail was near Waimea Canyon which was this beautiful canyon with reds and greens seen from viewpoints along the road. It was just three of us today, Dad, Paul and I. We drove up this steep road that gained elevation quickly in a series of steep switchbacks. We didn't stop too long to take in the view as we had a goal for the day. When we got to the trailhead, there was still parking left and we got going. The first part of the trail offered amazing views down into the gorge below that led right to the ocean.

This picture was the classic one of Kauai and was truly stunning. The trail itself was in awful shape. There was no effort in this section to improve the trail and it just looked like one giant swath of exposed, slimy dirt. That is one thing that I found unappealing about the Hawaiian islands is that it is this lush paradise, but they don't seem to take any time to improve their trails. We hiked this one for a time, trying to all keep our balance as it went up and down, mostly down until we ran into a trail junction.. The first junction we did alright at, but the second one was a three way junction.

We took the one that said Alakai Swamp because that was the hike that we were doing. It turned out that we were supposed to take the one that went out to the lookout with its own name, Kilohana. I had not read the guidebook close enough to remember that and neither did anyone else, so we ended up coming out at a separate trailhead. Oh well, we sat down to have lunch and then headed back. Luckily the extra portion of trail was the best we had seen on the day and everyone was still in good spirits. We added about 2 miles to our 8 mile hike with this side trip.

The weird thing was trying to explain this to the people we saw hiking back from the lookout. The trail to the lookout was mostly boardwalk and steps. This led through a swamp that was really not a swamp, just some muddy ground. Getting to the lookout was sort of anti-climatic as there was no view. It was socked in by clouds. We also shared it with a couple from Sweden who took the best bench and didn't seem to be in any sort of hurry. We left them after trying to call Jacqueline to tell her we would be a little later than we thought. They were possibly going to meet us, but now with our added time, we were going to miss them for sure. Still, I made sure to make it back to the trailhead by the time that we had told them on the phone. By the end of the hike, we had received a bit of weather and it was rather socked in. We missed Jacqueline and they had missed some of the views as they had clouds near the top. Oh well, it was still nice to put a few miles in and enjoy the lush forests of Kauai.