This morning we had to get down to Port Allen airport by 8am to catch our morning helicopter tour. On every day of our stay in Kaua’i, the front page of the newspaper had an article about a helicopter crash at the north end of the island a few weeks ago. The pilot that crashed was a new pilot and claimed he was taking an evasive maneuver to avoid another helicopter and crashed when he hit a wall of rain. While taking care of paperwork for the tour we found out that the pilot he was trying to avoid was to be the pilot for our tour. Our pilot said he wasn't near the helicopter when it crashed, but there has been a lot of talk in general and no real facts about this crash. Big news on this small island. But we picked this tour company because of the reviews we had read, the type of helicopter they use, and the fact that they don't put doors on the craft! Exciting!

A word on Kaua’i storms. When we were loading the car this morning we could see some rain coming across the ocean towards us. In between trips to the car it started to pour. Nice thing about being on the ocean, just wait about two minutes and the rain will stop. Inland storms aren't quite as passing but the storms can show up just as quickly.

As we were waiting to get started, it started raining at the airport and the pilot went in to check the radar. He determined that it was too dangerous to fly and our helicopter tour was cancelled. Bummer! Oh well, we tried. We spent the time visiting salt ponds beach and driving down some alternate routes to explore the island more.

A few days prior, Amy had seen a sign that read, "Ukulele Sale" when returning from Polihale in the evening. We had stopped but the store was closed for the night. Amy had expressed her interest in buying a ukulele days before but this was the first time she saw them as actual music instruments rather than toys. We passed the store again this morning and Damon pulled in to the parking lot. It was 9am and the store didn't open for another hour so we ventured across the street to have yet another prize-winning breakfast at some little old building. It was a small restaurant with nothing special for decorations. An old wood floor, somewhat old furniture, and one staff member working the entire front-of-house. It was called the Camp House Grill. We ordered a bunch of food and waited patiently. The food was probably the best breakfast Damon had ever tasted. It takes some real work to beat a home-cooked meal but this restaurant may have done so. Quite tasty!

An hour later the music store opened and they had 5-6 customers in the store within minutes. Amy found one of the sales reps opening windows (another store completely open-air) and he was eager to show off the ukuleles. Turns out, of all things, that he went to Full Sail, which is a specialty audio and video school right here in Orlando, Florida, where we live. We swapped comments of favorite restaurants in the area and what he's been doing since then. Amy bought her ukulele and we ventured next door to the post office. Ten dollars later it was on its way home to patiently wait for its new owners to return and show it some love.

After a bit more driving we gave in to the beckoning of the airport. It was time to fly.

While at the Oahu airport (a week earlier), Damon studied the scales used for weighing the luggage. The platform that the suitcases sit on is flat across the top but has a wide tab that hangs down towards us. They didn't bother weighing our luggage but while the people next to us had their luggage on the scale, Damon used his foot to lift the scale just a little to reduce the weight of the piece of luggage. Turns out this skill came in handy at the Lihue airport.

Two of our three pieces of checked luggage were over 50 lbs. Both were around 55 lbs. and the attendant was paying close attention to the scales. These scales didn't have nearly as big of a tab and had a little step that wasn't part of the floating platform. No matter, it wasn't too obvious when Damon put his foot up on the lip. Damon pressed his foot to the scale platform when he threw the first piece of luggage on the scale. It briefly jumped to 53.5 lbs. before Damon wedged his foot in and dropped it to the low 40s. The attendant put the sticker on the luggage and Damon quickly whisked it away. When the next piece of luggage was thrown on the scale it briefly pegged over 55 lbs. The attendant stared at the scale waiting for it to settle down. Apparently he didn't pay attention to the weight which wandered all over the place until Damon's foot finally found a good weight of 48 lbs. So, saving $50 in over-weight fees, Damon and Amy set off for their flight to Maui.

Upon arriving in Maui we were given a PT Cruiser convertible. Yikes. We briefly discussed the possibility of taking the top down just so we could fit the luggage inside the vehicle. It was tiny. Once inside we realized that it was quite the piece of junk car. We made a mental note to carefully convince any friends we know to never buy one.

We were given a magazine of maps by the car rental company. We say magazine because it was probably 70 pages and nearly all advertisements. After spending a few minutes looking for a single map showing the whole island, Damon gave up, threw the magazine in the back seat, and pulled out the laptop. Good ol' Microsoft Streets and Trips. We looked at the island and found our route in about a minute. That, combined with some maps that Amy printed off the internet, we headed to our new condo.

Outrigger Palms at Wailea was beautiful. Our first encounter with the place was an incredible view of the sunset right from the front desk. Like most of the other establishments in the state, it was all open to the outside air. And unlike the Castle Makahuene in Kaua’i, which had a kitchen with too many ants to put food in, old and stained furniture, and lack of AC - this unit was perfect. The place was clean and the furniture was new. The appliances were all new and the kitchen was quite clean, too. In the bedroom was a small Fujitsu AC unit which was just what we needed. Unfortunately, it was getting late and we needed to get up early in the morning.

The front desk led us to the Shops at Wailea which head a nice cheeseburger restaurant. For $10 apiece, both Damon and Amy got bacon cheddar cheeseburgers which were quite yummy. Amy got a Mai Tai in a pineapple for about the same price. All said the meal hit the spot perfectly. The Shops at Wailea was quite fancy and was filled with upscale shops which simply looked too expensive to consider - while on vacation anyway. We can go to those kinds of places at home. We walked through and found an ABC Store (similar to an Eckerd or CVS). We saw them on nearly every block in Oahu but it seemed quite unusual to find one here. The front had a selection of decent t-shirts and flip-flops (again, seemed quite out of the ordinary). In the back there was a small selection of groceries - just enough to make us happy. We even found some Gouda cheese (which we wouldn't expect from a quickie-mart type place).

We returned to the condo and went right to bed at 8pm, too tired to take any pictures.