Kauai - Day 8

Tuesday November 20, 2018

We originally didn't have anything planned for this day, so, during some down town earlier in the trip, did a bit of research for activities near Princeville and came across The Princeville Ranch; a 2,500 acre working family ranch that also puts on different adventures including kayaking, ATVing, Ziplining, etc. The 4x4 Off-Road Adventure including 2 ziplines, lunch, and a swim sounded fun to us, so we booked it.
Check-in was at 7:30 am, but with The Ranch just down the road from us the morning wasn't too rushed. As all the people trickled in for the "adventure" we realized a few things. First being that we were the only ones who had opted to ride with a guide (the cheaper option haha). Second being that the rest of the crowd seemed to be made up of families, some with fairly small children... hah.
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The perks of being driven around with a guide soon became apparent though. Not only were we in the front of the caravan, the guy driving us had 4+ years of experience. He had the trails totally memorized and was able to maximize both the speed as well as the mud factors. John was nice and let me take the front seat. After a bit I'm not sure I got the better end of the deal though... I got completely soaked haha. It was a LOT of fun cruising around in the ATV's and just enjoying the ride without having to worry about driving though.
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The day turned out to be a good one, and we got some great shots with the morning light. The highlight of the ATV portion was definitely the awesome overlook they led us to. We all got out of the vehicles for a bit to admire the scenery and snap a few pictures of course.
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After about 10 miles on the ATVs we parked them and set off on foot for a short trail walk to the Ziplines. The two Ziplines were about 500 ft each, and a pretty fun. The best part was probably watching this tiny 5 year old kid get up the gumption to go. Man he was so cute. Afterwords I overheard his mom ask him what he thought. His response, "Not as good as I had hoped." I was DYYYING! hahah I mean what kind of 5 year old kid talks like that??
Another 'Zipline funny' happened to me on the last one. The guide got me all hooked up and ready to go and I decided to launch myself as hard as I could, unfortunately one of my feet slipped on the platform, which lead to what I'm sure wasn't a very graceful takeoff. John was behind me waiting to go next and said that the guide's response was something to the effect of, "Wow, she really went for it." hahaha
After the Ziplines it was another quick walk to the swimming hole and lunch. The hole was "refreshing" (aka freezing), but it did feel really good to wash off the mud from the drive. We chilled at the picnic area for a bit, and while doing so one of the guides was chatting with me and apologized that we were so outnumbered haha. Not sure if the tour usually has that many kids or if it was just a weird day. We still had fun though. Once everyone was sufficiently fed we took off on the final walk back to our ATV's. Then it was a short-ish drive back to the starting point.
All in all it was a fun morning. I liked that fact that we got to do a little bit of everything on our adventure, but that also made it so everything was a bit "middle of the pack" as far as adrenaline goes. I'm not sure I'd pay that kind of money to do it again. Maybe something more epic like their Zipline Tour with 9 lines (one of which is 1,200 ft long!) would have been more our speed. Oh well, we still had a good time.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent at the pool of course. Eventually the weather pushed us inside though. By that time we were ready to be indoors anyways, having had a full day outside.
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That evening we had reservations at the Kauai Grill at the St. Regis Princeville. It was fun to get a bit dressed up and pretend like we were rich for an evening. (I definitely don't belong in that crowd haha) The food was reaaaaally good too. We got shrimp as starters, John ordered the beef tenderloin, and I got the lamb chops. I think I won this time, but man they were both good. To finish it off we got some sort of chocolate goodness with ice cream. It was awesome and a fun way to end our time in the ritzy Princeville area.

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