Kalalau Valley from Kalalau Lookout Sunday - Day 3 We had another early start this morning, taking advantage of it being Sunday to drive south through Lihue without morning rush hour traffic. We drove west to Waimea Canyon State Park and straight through to the end of the road to make our first stop at Kalalau Lookout and then to visit the other lookouts on the return drive down the canyon. This had been recommended to me online, and as we passed several beautiful scenic views, Linda told me the views better still be clear on our way back. (Fortunately they were:-) Despite a little bit of clouds in the Kalalau Valley the view was beautiful, including Kalalau Beach, a little of the ocean, and a falls listed on the sign at nearby Puu o Kila Lookout as Nawaihiolomele Falls, commonly known as Twin Falls. Funny thing is a search of Google for the waterfall's name brought zero results with that name. Looking at the falls live, I didn't spot the "twin" in shadow to the right, but found it when preparing the photo for this report.
We drove back down the edge of the canyon, stopping at both marked lookouts and unmarked turnouts along the road. At the next lookout it was a little hazy and the colors were muted. There was also a trail head and I was looking to see if there was anything interesting at the start of the trail, where a woman told us that we could see some wild goats nearby if we went off the trail to the right. It was a very short walk and we found two feral goats along the top of the canyon. They were maybe 40 feet away and we had them to ourselves. After carefully taking photos, as we returned to the trail, I paid forward by telling someone else about them, but I am pretty sure he ignored the tip. The next stop gave us our first view of 800 foot Waipo'o
Falls that wasn't from a moving car. It was far across the canyon and
we saw only part of it, so it really didn't look that large, but at succeeding
stops we got better angles of the distant falls. At one of the spots, I
zoomed the camera in on a couple standing next to the top of the longest
drop. When I mentioned it to the people around us, one party said they
had hiked there earlier in the morning and that you really couldn't see
the falls from that spot.
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