Now, clearly, it wouldn’t have been a top-shelf property and still be available at the last minute but it wasn’t too bad. We paid about $65 a night for a studio with a “kitchenette,” a deck with a middling view of the golf course, and the most uncomfortable couch ever created on this or any other planet.

I put kitchenette in quotes because as minimal as a kitchenette is to a true kitchen, this thing was to a true kitchenette. We’re talking about a hot plate and a toaster oven on the same piece of furniture as the television. Well, to be fair, there was also a mini-fridge. It only took 36 hours for it to actually get cold enough to place food inside.

There was, however, a pool. It was nothing at all special, about 12×36 feet and sloping from 3 to 9 feet deep. It did have the endearing quality of being empty at almost all hours of the day. Jen and I took to going once or twice in the afternoon every day with a big jug of the daily cocktail. Jugtail?

it was a great place to base our operation on the north side though. We ran out to Hanalei (of Puff the Magic Dragon fame) a few times and then all the way out to Ke’e Beach. There was a great observation point just outside of Princeville proper where you could overlook the valley and see the rice paddies and other farming activity. It was right about here:

View Princeville, Kaua’i Overlook in a larger map

It was a fantastically amazing view, here are a few pictures:

It was a great place to be, but we had saved enough money from cheaping out earlier we decided to splurge for the last night and left this place a day early.

Related posts:

1. Salt Pond
2. Gym Flooring
3. Laying Hardwood Flooring

View Glass Beach in a larger map

This is a picture of me on the southernmost point on the above map. There was a small path leading down here from the hillside above. The dirt areas of hill were filled with rusted bits of engines and transmisisons. There was even a smashed car partly buried and hanging out of the hillside.

There was a cemetery on the coast there as well. Completely inexplicable and unmarked except for the headstones. There were several of these types of cemeteries around the island. I would love to know the story and significance of them.

I also got my first experience GeoCaching with Sherri. She had already found this one a few months before so she just helped me along and let me find it. Way fun!

That’s a picture of me writing in the logbook for the GeoCache, I didn’t come prepared with any little trinket to leave behind unfortunately. I will remember next time!

For a tiny little beach in an industrial area, there was sure a lot of interesting things to see and do there. We were very glad to have taken the time to stop here and check it out.

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1. Salt Pond
2. Waimea Canyon

One of those was Salt Pond. Here’s a great view from above. It’s easy to see why it is called Salt Pond.

View Larger Map

That rocky area to the left of the main beach was where I took these pictures:

We didn’t have our beach gear or anything so we didn’t stay a long time. The neat thing there is that around every bend in the road is a great beach. Just stop the car whenever you feel like it, clamber out and stick your feet in the ocean. How cool is that?

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1. Princeville, Kaua’i
2. Glass Beach
3. Wesport June 09

View Larger Map

The views were quite stunning. I really wished I had a tripod and my laptop with me so I could shoot some High Dynamic Range pictures, but these will have to do:

Sherri was nice enough to take a picture of Jen and I enjoying the scenery.

Down in the parking lot someone had set up a makeshift concession area where we got a couple good snaps of the unofficial island bird.

It was a lot of fun up there. Like most things on the island it was within a 45min drive so we were able to visit and still have plenty of time in the day for other things.

Related posts:

1. Salt Pond
2. Glass Beach
3. Princeville, Kaua’i

Related posts:

1. Good Morning from Hawai’i

There are way worse ways to spend the holidays. Be safe, enjoy each other.

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1. Good Morning from Hawai’i

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1. Another great morning
2. Plans are for boring people

Teams had a roughly 12 foot square plot of beach to work in. The were assigned plots and allowed to set up their tools at 7am. They were unable to actually enter the plot and begin building until 9am. One of the things I was surprised to find out is that they did not allow you bring sand into or out of your plot. I suppose that just allows the ocean to put everything back pretty much where it came from.

Teams had until 3pm to build and were judged on things like height, cut-throughs, theme and using the plot evenly. We found out a few days before arriving here that Joel’s family was going to have a team present so we were excited to catch up with them and see how they did.

There are two beach access roads near the area and we wound up at the one furthest from the event. We had to walk about half a mile or so to get there but considering the state of parking where the event actually was I think it would have been the same either way. Plus, something about a walk along the beach seems a whole lot better than walking through a parking lot.

From Westport June 09

There were four different divisions for the competition; Family, Novice, Intermediate, and Master. the Family teams were clearly there just for the fun of hanging out together. I saw a bit of overlap in the Novice and Intermediate teams, but the Masters were just amazing. Particularly the theme and detail level of the Masters is what set them apart.

From Westport June 09

This team, in particular, reminded me of a team of archaeologists. It was as if they were uncovering something that was present already instead of building something that wasn’t. It was pretty neat to watch them work, their team was so tightly knit that they rarely needed to speak to one another.

From Westport June 09

Joel’s team was in the intermediate division. They went with a pop culter reference and chose a theme based on Transformers. I was leaning towards some of the more artistic themes, but what the hell do I know, they won their division!

From Westport June 09

It wasn’t supposed to turn out quite like this but I think adapting on-the-fly to build out Optimus Prime like a Sphinx was pretty inspired.

Here’s the winning team:

From Westport June 09

As the event wound down a little fella about Brady’s age walked behind me talking about the piece Joel’s team did. I could decide whether or not he was a jaded little shit or brilliant genius. He walked past and taking a long look said, “I bet they got paid to do that.”

Jaded or not, his observation was remarkable.

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1. Westport weekend
2. Battle of the Books 2009
3. Salt Pond

All three of the other girls are from Texas and are in a band there called Her Majesty’s Sweatbox. Jen was able to see one of their shows locally when she went down to hang out last summer.

They totally smashed it, the whole song came off well, I thought, and each of their individual parts were well received. The crowd especially enjoyed Adrienne’s mini-shred solo. I wasn’t able to take still photos during the actual performance because I was using Kristen’s DV cam to get some video.

She’s having a bit of difficulty uploading it so she’ll snail-mail up to us and I’ll post it as soon as I get it. Instead of the usual string of individual images I am putting this here slideshow in. Let me know if in the comments if you like one form over another.

I have some pics from the afterparty also which I will get up here next.

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1. Brady’s Band Festival

It wasn’t all work however, we took Friday and Saturday and went to Oregon for some actual vacationing. First thing Friday went drove down to Tillamook, Oregon and went to the Tillamook Dairy and Cheese Factory.

It was pretty fun. We got to watch all the machinery in operation, which both Jennifer and I love doing. We sampled several different kinds of cheese and got some smokin’ deals on cheese in the store there. We bought two pounds of peppercorn cheddar for only $5! Of course we had to get some ice cream while we there too.

After Tillamook we headed back to I-5 and Portland. After checking in at the hotel we went to Powell’s “City of Books.” It’s a book store that covers an entire city block. It’s pretty darned awesome. We picked up a few and spent the evening at the hotel reading and hanging out.

On Saturday Brady swam for an hour or so in the hotel pool while I read and we headed off to VooDoo Doughnut. It is probably the single most amazing donut shop in the history of the world. Ever.

The box does not lie…

Right there you have the raspberry filled VooDoo man, the Tang, Grape Ape and NoName. Then there is the Triple Chocolate (with cocopuffs), Dirt (with Oreo bits), and the singularly most exquisite doughnut ever, the bacon maple bar. I’ll suffer the heart attack gladly.

After gorging on VooDoo we went to one of the craziest Putt-Putt courses I’ve ever seen. It was right in the middle of the city, tucked into the side and under a regular office building. It’s called Glowing Greens and it’s a black-light, 3D glasses, pirate wreck, reggae music themed extravaganza.

As the course goes, it was fairly easy. It was really the theme of the place that made it a worthwhile experience. I think they tried really hard to monetize every single thing they could think of, going so far as to sell mint patties in a glass case. The clubs and balls were all brand-new, which was great, it was just a wee bit basic of a course for my taste.

It would definitely make it into the book Jen and I want to write about putt-putt courses in the U.S. though…maybe someday.

That was it, back home for a few hours rest, and then back to work full-tilt on Sunday.

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