Kauai: Queen’s Bath

Pretty much every part of our trip was fantabulous.  Really, we just had a splendid time zipping around the island in our sparkly little rental car that was the perfect invigorating shade of blue.  I should have taken a picture of that adorable little car, but I forgot to do that.  It was wonderfully fun to be able to fit into a peaceful little compact car for a week, when we are used to a van full of squabbles.

One of my very favorite places that we visited was The Queen’s Bath.  We ended up here after a day of sightseeing with our friends, after a long hike to a magnificent waterfall that we never even got to see because access to the public had been cut off by some billionaire who build a 30 million dollar house where the trail should have been according to the guidebooks.  We were a hot and sweaty mess after we got back to our vehicles, so we stopped for a cool treat and ended up buying some fruit at a spontaneous little farmer’s market, and then we headed off to the Queen’s Bath.

It’s called the Queen’s Bath because Queen Emma really did bathe here.  Our friends had visited this spot a few days previous when the wind was gusting uncontrollably, but they obliged my desire to see it for myself.  I’m so glad I had the opportunity to visit this stretch of rocky shore.  Waves of an incredible blue were sloshing around and spraying as they crashed into the rocks, and you know how much I love waves and rocks.  If I could have, I probably would have stayed the entire rest of the day at this place.

This little pool is the actual “bath” where people can go swimming in water that is calm if the ocean isn’t sloshing too much.  We visited on what I think might have been a medium calm day.  The waves sloshed in every once in awhile, but didn’t seem too turbulent.  There were some local people swimming and jumping into the pool because we happened to go to this place on Monday, when there was no school because of President’s Day.  (Unfortunately the swimmers had a portable speaker blaring Taylor Swift songs, which kind of took away from the peace a bit, but if you walked just a few steps away the sound of the crashing waves drowned out the audio.)  

It was amazing to watch how the waves would crash in and fill up the crevices with 10-20 more feet of water, and then everything would pour out again.  I was mesmerized.