Coast Walk and Waimea Canyon on Kauai

Started the day at the pool in Poipu — thatched umbrellas, lava rock around the edges, the ocean just past the lounge chairs. Then out along the shoreline east of the resort, where the trail runs over black rock and low green scrub before it climbs onto the cliffs. Big surf down there, waves breaking straight into the rock and the spray blowing back up over the ledges. Farther along you look down onto Maha'ulepu, a long empty beach with one white house at the tree line and mountains stacked behind it.

Afternoon was the drive up Highway 550 to Waimea Canyon — the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, as everyone insists on calling it, and from the overlook just past mile marker 10 it earns the name. Waipʻo Falls drops about 800 feet down the far wall in two stages. There's a Cliff Trail that ends at the very top of the falls, which is hard to picture from across the gorge. Red dirt and green ridges in bands all the way down.