Coffee Plantation

On Friday of our vacation we got to visit Kauai Coffee Plantation.  Kauai Coffee Company was founded on the island in early 19th century and have been producing coffee there ever since.  They grow coffee on some 3000+ acres on the western side of Kauai and allow guests to take an 1/8 mile tour through some of the plants.  There are signs along the way describing the process of coffee production from planting and growing to roasting and selling.  They also had many different flavored coffees out for sampling.  I tried some of their regular coffee and banana macadamia nut.  I also bought an iced coffee cup there and was given a free fill-up.

A beautiful close up of unripe coffee beans.

Coffee plants as far as the eye can see.

They use machines like this to harvest their crop.

Sign 7 here says "Sorting things out".  These structures are used to
sort through their different grades of coffee beans.  They have five
classes and sell coffee for each one.

Sampling some of the coffee.

Hawaii

The past 10 days we took a family vacation with Elise's family to the Hawaiian island of Kauai.  We took over 2500 pictures (I have no idea how many we took but that seems like a good napkin estimate).  Over the next week or so we will be uploading different posts chronicling the different adventures we had there.

After a flight delay due to adverse weather conditions in Chicago (we flew out of LAX), we got to Lihue just after sunset.  I had a window seat and snapped a few pictures of said sunset from the plane; as a bonus we all saw the mythical 'green flash'.  Between getting people's luggage (I always carry-on), getting the rental car and driving it was pretty late by the time we got to our destination in Hanalei.  Since it was dark during the drive I did not get to see much of 'The Garden Isle' that night.  I woke up the next morning, and the entire week, around 6-630 am local time.  Elise got up with me the first morning and we took some pictures of our view.

If you click to enlarge the pictures you can see part of the flash.

I thought these birds were beautiful; these hung around everywhere in  Hanalei.
I gave a few nicknames, this one is chubs.

View from the balcony at 630.

One of Kauai's many waterfalls.

Enjoying breakfast with a view.

My new favorite past time- morning coffee with a view.

Many, many more to come!!  Feel free to comment below about your favorite ones or memories from the different locales on Kauai.