Feb. 9, Monday:  Lydgate

Woke up to another beautiful day on the Eastside!  Temperatures got up to 80, but the wind was probably 80, too!  It's more like the windy Kauai I remember.  We thought of heading south, but the wind was blowing from the south, so we decided to check out Lydgate today.  But first----
view from our lanai.  Sure wish this was our view at home!!!  

 I noticed a lifeguard even patroling the beach by Kauai Beach Villas.  I assume he came from Lydgate.

 
Just another flower picture.  I've been deprived of flowers for a couple months now back home.

  Breakfast was at Olympic Cafe again.  We tried to go to Eggbert's, but there were people waiting for seats so we left.   More interesting views from our seats at Olympic Cafe.  Ken always talks about getting a trailer.  I think if he does I'll paint it like this and put the grass skirts on it, too.

  Breakfast was great again---as was service.   I had the ham and egg omelet and Ken had a breakfast quesidillo.   I even had papaya.  I thought I'd had it before, but if I did it sure didn't taste like what I had this morning.  This papya was really good.

  Love the colors of this car.

 Also got a kick out of this biker.  Back home I know a lot of serious bikers.  They all wear the cute little biking outfits and have high priced biking accessories.  Love how here you can just throw a basket on the back and load it up.

  After breakfast, we decided to ride by Baby beach in Kapaa.  Much to our surprise, there was a monk seal swimming around in there (note the dark area to the right of the center of this photo).

  We watched it for about 30 minutes.  It slowly cruised and rolled around.  Eventually we noticed the scaring on it.  The wounds look like they've healed, but it sure looks like it's had a tough time.

  A view of more of it's scaring.

  (A couple days later we saw a Monk patrol lady and she showed me this sign and said it described this seal)

 Then we took off to Lydgate.

  There were a lot of these saddle wrasses there.

  belted wrasse

  yellow fin snapper

  cigar wrasse

 not the clearest picture, but I didn't get too close to this guy.  Not the biggest barracuda we've seen while snorkeling, but he was a good size.

 we often see shell critters here. (a cone snail---hopefully not poisonous)

   Hawaiian sergeant major

 the school of mullets were there again.

  yellow tail coris

 After sitting there at Lydgate beach for awhile, we did something we don't often do on vacation---headed back to our condo while still daylight.  Hit the jacuzzi for a while, then sat on our lanai overlooking the ocean and soaked in the deep blues and greens of the ocean, blues of the skies, whites of the clouds, greens of the plants, and a brilliant rainbow.   The weather reports said it was suppose to rain a lot today, but we didn't get any.

 At 5, we headed to Brick Oven Pizza in Kapaa for their Monday night $16.95 buffet.  It's a popular thing---they were having trouble keeping up with all the people eating off the buffet, but we still enjoyed our dinner.

We got back to KBV early enough for me to go to the E Kanikapila Kakau concert at Kauai Beach Resort (our neighbor hotel).  So I walked over to the hotel and joined the hundreds of people already there.  These are popular events and the group performing today were very acclaimed.  The 2 1/2 hours went by very quickly.  The hotel even sets up a food bar with kalua pork, chili (I think), drinks, and desserts for purchase.   It's also obvious that this is an event enjoyed by a lot of locals, not just visitors.

  This was week 4 of this season featuring Beamers Aloha Music Camp Instructors (Kaliko Beamer Trapp, Alan Akaka, Herb Ohta Jr, Uluwehi Guerrero, Kevin Brown, Jeff Peterson, Liko Puha, Kona Bob Stoeffer.

 A perfect way to end another perfect day on Kauai.