The school year wrapped up for my kiddo recently. While we normally try to take a vacation each summer, we realized that our typical vacation time this year is already blocked off by a family reunion. And a family reunion is NOT a vacation, it’s an obligation. It can be a fun obligation, but it’s definitely about a lot of other people’s schedules more than our little family of 3. So we started to look for a quick getaway option.

Our first reaction was to look at Disneyland, but it’s really hard to just go to Disney these days. You need reservations way in advance now! And a joke about how it would probably be easier to go to Hawaii than to just pop over one state suddenly became a reality when we booked a trip to Kauai.

(I am a creature of habit and routine… spontaneous trips are really not my jam. I over-plan and over-analyze everything in life. I’ve been that way for as long as I can remember. I totally bailed on a spur-of-the-moment trip to CA in college with friends to go see The Price is Right because I felt like it would throw my life out of wack too much. When I saw this funny video on YouTube about 20s vs 40s vacation, I laughed because my whole life has been the 40s approach! But sometimes, it is good for you to shake up the normal routine.)

I definitely feel the need to visit Kauai again. We had 3 full days on the island and I feel I didn’t get enough time to see or do everything, mainly because we started to really learn about what there was to do there as we were on the island. My kid now wants to do an ATV tour on the island. And I just want to hike A TON.

But I made a few smart decisions before the trip and I figured I would share some of those:

Fitness Apparel/Moisture Wicking Clothes

I packed a couple of adidas tanks, sports bras, hats, and running shorts. It was all very lightweight and moisture-wicking. Kauai is VERY humid and I remembered when I went to Maui in the past I just felt like my cotton clothes seemed heavy at times. On this trip I decided I wasn’t going to take anything OTHER than workout clothing. I knew it was a sudden trip and we were mostly going to be hanging out in low-key locations, so I didn’t need anything fancy. I was way more comfy this way. 

Plus when I went out for a couple of miles on my own and it rained on me, my athletic wear dried quickly. 

Variety of Shoes

When hanging out on a beach, you don’t need anything super fancy. Simple plastic sandals that can be filled with water or sand without worry of damage are perfect. But there are a lot of trails on Kauai. It also rains a lot there. I also packed running shoes, but hiking shoes or trail runners would be wise too. We took a trail by our hotel that lead down to a beach and it was so steep, muddy, and slippery it would have been nice to have more traction. I want to go back and cover more of the trails and I’ll definitely need shoes with grip.

Sunblock

Hawaii has rules about sunblock. Instead of packing my own and risking that they were wrong, I just bought sunblock there and assumed it was all reef-safe. Sunblock is easy to find at all stores in Hawaii. Respect the islands, their environment, and follow the rules. Look for the words “reef-safe” on the packaging.

Rent a Convertible

I mean, you don’t have to do this… but it was fun. Do I want a Mustang convertible in real life? Nope… the doors are big and heavy and there are only two of them. It had a crummy turning radius. But it was fun for the environment. A Jeep could be fun, but who wants to store all the door parts in your hotel room? Convertible is the way.

*I was gifted an adidas gift card recently, and in addition to some new running shoes and running clothes, I bought a sweatshirt. I LOVE it… but it’s not really sweatshirt weather here in Vegas right now. Maybe I should plan a trip somewhere cold! But I do plan to post specifically about the shoes, because they are my first pair of “super shoes”… aka shoes with a carbon fiber plate in them. I doubt I’ll be super fast (see all the cancer drama of 2022) but it will still be fun to experiment.

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