Just got back from a weekend golfing trip to Kauai. It was great. More details and pictures to come.

A friend won a golf trip to the Princeville resort and when he asked around for any golfers to go, I quickly volunteered. We selected the Thanksgiving weekend as the long weekend that wouldn’t eat up many vacation days.

We left COS at 6 AM Thursday and arrived at the hotel about 8 PM that night. I had to use a half day vacation since we left Honolulu at midnight Sunday and didn’t get in to COS until 11:30 AM Monday.

The weather was mostly fantastic. We were expecting that mornings wuold be clear and rain in the afternoons and evenings. Turned out to be better. Friday we played Makai, The Ocean and The Lakes courses (9 holes each). We left out The Woods course. I shot a fairly decent round, playing bogey golf. Some of those views are spectacular.

Afterwards we drove along the North Shore to Kee Beach (end of the road) and then turned around and went to the East Side for dinner. And it never rained. Once the sun sets, and the skies are clear, the Milky way is bigger and clearer that what I see in Colorado. The skies were clear. Walking by the ocean at night, in November, in a short sleeved shirt, quite an experience.

Saturday, we played the Prince Course. That morning it was raining, a light persistent drizzle that obscured the vision so you couldn’t see more than a hundreds yards out. And since I often have no idea where my golf balls will go once they pass 100 yards, I wasn’t comfortable about golfing this way. However the starter thought the rain would blow through after a while, there was no rush to get us out, and we warmed up and checked out the equipment demo and waited for the rain to stop. And it eventually did and we went out and the rain started back up in a brief flurry and by the third hole had ended. Unfortunately, the first two holes are monsters that require pinpoint ball-striking and I didn’t play well with wet grips. So the first few holes were disasters and I settled down by the fourth hole.

I played pretty respectable the rest of the way, but the Prince is an unforgiving treacherous course, with hidden ravines laying in wait to eat golf balls. This course is rated #1 in Hawaii, but I think it is rated by sadists.

There was hole #12 where we get to the tee box and we are at the top of a cliff overlooking a valley with two fairways going in different directions. One is wide open and the other is a seen through a slit in the trees. We look over the GPS Map in the cart and determine that we are aiming for the slit. This is like a 2 degree opening in the trees to land in. My first shot is long and straight and goes into the trees on the right. My second, third and fourth shots are all long and straight and going into the trees on the left (I corrected my aim). I gave up and went down into the valley to see if there was anything to find. The balls to the left were lost in a thick canopy of trees and vines. But, I did find my first ball, by the cart path, where the undergrowth wasn’t. It was a simple recovery back to the fairway and then on the green, where I two-putted for bogey. A simple game, why do I play?

I was happy this round to play double bogey golf most of the way. The sun came out forthe back nine and it was another gorgeous afternoon.

Saturday evening we just drove into Hanalei for dinner and had a rather early evening.

Sunday was tourist day; the sun was out, the skies were clear and we drove to Waimea Canyon. Got to the Canyon overlook and were awed by the views. Then we drove back down, found we still had a lot of time before the flight and realized that we hadn’t gone to the end of the road to the Kalalau Overlook. So back we went and the view was worth it. The overlook is over the Na’Pali coast. At 4,000 feet, you are looking at the ocean shore a mile away and some of the sheeer Na’Pali cliffs.

I would love to go back for several weeks just to explore some of that area on foot.

We ended up getting tons of photos, which will be displayed later. I hope they capture some of the grandeur and beauty we saw.

We ended up by the shore in Lihue for dinner before our flight after getting lost trying to find Poipu on the way back. How do you get lost on an island with only one road? Don’t ask.