Like some bad parody of a George M. Cohan musical number, I didn’t want to get up this AM but you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up in the morning. I had every intention of running a tapered 6 miler this morning but wound up doing an 8 mile run out past Kealia Beach. I got a later start thinking I would be running less and thus saw a bit more on my way out thanks to the sun creeping over the horizon. It was another spectacular morning.
Returning to the hotel, Mom and I sat outside on the beach, enjoying the sound of crashing waves and watching the sand crabs scurry about as if on their own hoverboards.
With a promise of a mostly sunny day (as opposed to the previous day’s forecasts of rain giving way to make-one-believe-in-higher-power sunshine), we thought we’d visit the National Tropical Botanical Garden™ out by Spouting Horn. I first took Mom to see the Opaekaa Falls, which also afforded an overhead lookout on the Wailea River where we had cruised to the Fern Grotto a few days before.
Before making the 40 minute trek to the southwestern end of Kauai, we stopped at this temporary bus stop that Mom and I found oddly hilarious. The cushioned dining room chairs feel like a poor choice in a rainy climate but, hey, they’re super comfortable when one is by the side of the road awaiting a bus. And kudos on providing a trash can to preclude littering!
A literal hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Poipu enabled us to grab lunch and sit by the sea wall. I actually think it’s where the Marathon will finish tomorrow. I know it’s where I sat about a year ago and had a plate lunch from a different hole-in-the-wall joint. There’s a lot of holes and a lot of walls in Kauai… and most of them have pretty good food.
From there, it was a short hop, skip, and a right turn into the Botanical Gardens. We opted for the guided tour of the Allerton Garden, a five “room” sprawling wonderland that National Geographic Traveler hailed as one of the 50 places to see in one’s lifetime in the US. Robert Allerton and his longtime companion John Gregg Allerton would combine their artistic and architectural know-how to cultivate a majestic natural preserve and landscape magnum opus. Our guide was Dave Flowers (his surname really was Flowers and he said his kids felt it was destiny that he would wind up here after recovering from a misspent life as a lawyer – he said he was okay with that). It was one of those tours where the guide so clearly has a passion and love for the place and what it means that one can’t help but be swept up into the experience. Dave focused on narratives and backstories of the “rooms” (which are discrete segments of the 83 acre gardens) and would also point out botanical beauties without delving too far into scientific minutiae that would have had my eyes glaze over.
Some select snapshots from the tour, including a tag-a-long duck named Henry and a few trees that appeared in Jurassic Park (1993):
After the 2.5 hour walking tour, we headed back to our hotel. A somewhat surprisingly disappointing dinner at the local “home cooking” restaurant has given way to an early night. MY alarm is set for 3:30 AM tomorrow, allowing us ample time to drive the 45 minutes to the start line. The big downside to this location is that drive to the race but there’s a lot of upside too – like this view for example, taken as Mom and I sat on a log this morning:
And so as the sun sets once more in paradise, I prepare for the dawn. It’s not a training run. It’s a 26.2 mile marathon.
I gotta get up. I gotta get up. I gotta get up in the morning.
Tomorrow – I run. Mom cheers. And there may be a celebratory drink for Hawaii dodging a hurricane. Or so I hope. As Dave reminded us at the Allerton – Hurricane Iniki turned on a dime in September 1992 and though it passed all the other islands of Hawaii, it changed course in the evening and caught Kauai off guard. They don’t know how high the winds got as the anemometer disintegrated when Iniki’s winds hit 227 mph.
Thus, even though at present all forecasts and models show Hurricane Lester having missed Hawaii, I’m not taking anything for granted… all the more so as Hurricane Hermine is devastating the East Coast of the mainland… having started in my home state of Florida and continued on a rampage north. Fingers crossed all are safe and whatever damage is just things and stuff, all that can be replaced.