After our hike and horseback ride in the morning, we loaded up the rental with a packed picnic lunch bought at the hotel and all of our beach things and headed west on highway 50. We drove until we reached the end of the highway--literally, and then we bumped over five miles of dirt road until we reached Polihale Beach.
Polihale Beach stretches all along the western coast of Kauai, and even though parts of it have different names to denote different places of interest, it's all one uninterrupted stretch of sand that goes on for 15 miles.
We drove to the northern most part of the beach, where the sand meets the Na Pali Coast cliffs.
The wild was crazy over here. Polihale Beach is known for its strong currents and rough shorebreak, so swimming is greatly discouraged.
These waves were pounding so hard, that the beach appears hazy from all the sea spray bursting up from the water.
{Dad testing out the waters--he was the only one of us who actually got all the way in}
{the Na Pali cliffs capping the northern end of the beach}
{more cliffs behind us}
I shot a short panoramic sweep of the beach. You can see the cliffs behind us, the long stretch of sand on either side of us and then of course, the pounding surf.
The main reason we came out to this beach was to do a flower ceremony for Aunt Michelle who recently passed away.
We brought fresh orchid leis to the ocean, removed the blossoms from the string and took turns tossing the flowers out into the surf. The strong ocean waves took most of the flowers out to sea, but a few danced back and forth across the sand, scattered by the shorebreak.
{flowers for Aunt Michelle}
Later on, I did a short beach run along the water, and it was lovely to see that the orchids that we had tossed in dotted the beach along the entire way.
An hour before sunset we left the beach and headed back to the hotel. It was a long day with lots of sun and lots of memories--both old and new.
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