Entries about fort elizabeth

The first thing we went to see today was the Russian Fort, Fort Elizabeth. This was built by Russian representatives who had the idea of making the Kingdom of Hawaii a Russian protectorate. It is a complicated historical incident, but it seems likely that Kaumuali'i, the chief of Kauai, was simply trying to enlist Russian help in gaining independence from Kamehameha. The fort operated as Fort Hipo under the Kingdom of Hawaii for some time before being dismantled.

The fort looks over the spot on the Waimea River where Captain Cook first landed in Hawaii, and (according to the plaque) was mistaken for the god Lono (Catherine pointed out that the "explorer mistaken for a god" story seems too common to be true in every case in which it has come up).

Afterwards, we visited the town of Hanapepe. Hanapepe is home to the westernmost bookstore in the United States (meaning that on this trip we have seen the oldest bookstore in continuous operation in the world, and the westernmost in the United States. Perhaps we should start an "extreme bookstores" blog). The store is called Talk Story, and was a very nice little shop. They had an extensive collection of vinyl records, but these would have been hard to transport home so we mostly looked at the books.

Hananpepe is famous for something else as well: it is the town that inspired the setting of the movie Lilo and Stitch. Last year, before we went to Maui, Catherine thought that Daniel needed to watch this movie before we went to Hawaii. We watched it and both enjoyed it. Catherine was very excited to see the town where it all took place.

There are numerous art galleries around Hanapepe, including this koa wood gallery that has beautiful furniture and art. There was an incredible koa wood dining table with eight chairs, but at $18,000 we thought it was a bit out of our price range.

We had some delicious grilled cheese sandwiches with macadamia nut pesto for lunch.


And then some guava and lilikoi shave ice for dessert!

After this we toured the Kauai Coffee Company plantation. We thought it might be very similar to the Gorreana Tea Plantation on Sao Miguel, and we were right! It had a self-guided tour through the coffee fields, and a free tasting, as well as a gift shop and cafe where you can buy coffee and other merchandise.

The coffee trees. This plantation supplies half of Hawaii-grown coffee.

They harvest it with a blueberry harvester.

More pictures on the farm. They dry it on these covered patios. The plantation has a view of the ocean, just like Gorreana.

We tried many different types of coffee, and ended up buying some as a souvenir and as gifts. It was very good, and Catherine said that she would be willing to drink some of the flavored coffees black.

A picture of our rental car, which has been a wonderful car. It is roomy and comfortable and fun to drive.


We then started driving up to Waimea canyon, "the Grand Canyon of the Pacific." There were beautiful views all along the way.

The views from the top were especially beautiful. It really does look just like the Grand Canyon. The colors are spectacular and the depth of the view is amazing.

We went back to the Koloa/ Poipu area and swam at Poipu Beach. It was very rocky, but we were able to walk along a ridge for a bit, then swim back in.

We went to dinner at Bangkok Happy Bowl, which was delicious. We had been wanting Thai food for a while. There was live music, which started with one of the songs from Moana, which we thought would have impressed Aubrey.

And after dinner, we went to Brennecke's Beach Broiler for some after-dinner drinks. It was a wonderful day!