Kauai Day 8 - Ke'e Beach

Today we drove to the end of the road and spent the day at Ke'e beach. Parking was scarce but our drivers dropped us off right at the beach and then managed to find parking not too far back down the road. We found a nice shady spot right near the lifeguard tower and set up camp. The water was clear and the sun was shining, and there were tons of people. We headed out to snorkel right away. I thought that with it being so clear we'd see lots of fish, but we saw more at Beach House than we did at Ke'e. Ke'e has a large reef and I was hoping that a sea turtle or two would swim over the reef to swim with us, but unfortunately, none did. The reef is really cool. Kelly swam out over it a little, but came back when she felt like she was going to swim into it (the reef is protected and you aren't supposed to touch it). The fish that we did see were spectacular! We saw our first clown fish (Nemo) swimming around an anemone and lots of coloured fish. We snapped lots of pictures, and hopefully we got some good shots. The sun shone through the crystal clear water all the way to the sandy bottom, so we had lots of good viewing, just not a ton of fish. Probably the one thing that I will remember about Ke'e is the BURNING HOT SAND! Holy cow! I kicked my sandals off in the shade and we were probably about 100-150 feet away from the water... I started walking out of the shade, and as soon as I hit the sand that had been baking in the sand all day, I thought my feet were going to melt off. Now, I am not a runner, or even a fast walker, but let me tell you...I TOOK OFF. Every foot fall was painful. It was such relief to hit the water. I am sure there was a sizzle when I hit the water! Ke'e also has the COOLEST trees lining the beach. The roots are huge and almost completely out of the ground making fun spots to hide. Taylor and I took a walk (in the shade, and with our shoes on) down the beach and took pictures. The other neat part of Ke'e is that if you walk far enough down the beach and look back, you can see the NaPali coastline sticking out into the ocean. So pretty.  On our way back from the beach to the cars, we convinced Nathan and Taylor to swing on some vines. Nathan did fine, but Taylor's vine broke when she lifted her feet off the ground, and she ended up sliding down the hill head first (all in slow motion). She got a scrape or two on her back, and cried a little, but she's fine. She said afterward "this beach hates me" because last year when we stopped here, she hurt her knee. Poor girl. I hope we can get her to swing on a vine somewhere else. We told her next time, I'd tug on it first to make sure it was strong enough. The crazy thing is that her vine looked stronger than Nathan's. On our way back to Poi'pu we stopped in Hanalei (of Puff the Magic Dragon fame) for dinner at Bubba's (burger shack). We got rained on a little bit and also saw a rainbow. Another perfect day in paradise.