Visit Kokee on the Beautiful Island of Kauai

On a recent trip we made to Kokee this year, our family enjoyed time with nature.

On the Island of Kauai there are many fun free things to do, but going to Kokee for a week tops them all.
Kokee is Kauai's mountain state park. You drive up a winding road up to a quaint museum and dozens of lookouts alongside the road for Waimea canyon. Deer and mountain goats roam. With Waterfalls along the sheer mountainside pouring into the canyon. Where blackberries and banana Lilikoi are abundant and free for the picking.

Only a fifty-mile drive from the coast where we live is a different world, where we drive down bumpy dirt roads with our truck full of supplies like blankets and water. Away from the oceans and beaches, up to another place.

If you are going to visit and want to check this place out be sure to get a map from the museum store and take a hike. While we were up there it was trout fishing season in the little lakes and streams about, and plum-picking season had just begun. It's also not uncommon to see hunters in their trucks with the bed full of their hunting dogs. They usually end up with some pretty nice boars to take home.

Kokee is a state park and does require permits for the Hunting, Fishing and camping. The yearly plum-picking season also requires a permit but it is quite informal as it is a form you fill out saying how many you picked and dropped into an unattended drop box.

We try to go to our spot once a year and if you ask me it's not enough. Twenty minutes down a dusty, bumpy road. Across streams and little bridges that don't look like they could hold the weight of our truck full of Kids, Dogs and camping gear.

Our spot sits below the parking area surrounded by great trees, overlooking our own private stream filled with crawfish and maybe a trout or two. A week of no cars, people, cell phones, or noise was bliss. A short hike to the right, crawling over large rocks in the stream comes to a secret abandoned plantation water place, a private waterfall for jumping off of.

If you walk to the left of our spot is a hike we go on and is beautiful with the native tree of ohia, and yellow ginger all around. Honeysuckle plants turn the air sweet and abuzz with the sound of the bees. The Boys caught some crawfish in the stream and I just had to boil them up and try them out. Like a small shrimp with lots of butter, add some mashed potatoes and your set.

Campfires by night with a light misting of the passing clouds, and an almost full moon to keep us company. The temperatures dropping to the lower sixties, so we can bundle up in our tent. Kokee is a magical place of peace and nature. I always hate to take that winding drive down hill.