Sept. 2, 2016  Snorkel at Lydgate, then checked out the South side:

Again the beaches website that Ken likes to use---http://www.hawaiibeachsafety.com/kauai---listed all the beaches as Extreme Hazards with high surf.  We decided to go see what the man made pond at Lydgate park looked like. 

 It actually looked quite good.  So we jumped in to see what was there now.

 It was pretty churned up and my new fuji camera from Costco isn't the greatest, so I was shooting pretty much blind and wondering what i'd come up with.  Here is a school of mullets.

 There were several of these puffers.  Even a few little ones.  There were a couple of them last time we were there in 2015.  Looks like they're still there.

 a rather large blue stripe snapper

 Don't often see these guys---a cigar wrasse.

 a belted wrasse. 

 a convict tang.

 I'm thinking this is a hybrid of a convict tang and perhaps a sergeant?

 school of Hawaiian flagtails.

 The school of these guys was smaller---but there were still 20 or so---yellow fin surgeonfish.

 a saddle wrasse---there were several of these guys there, too.

 and lots of yellow stripe goatfish

 a juvenile pale tail unicorn fish.

 a couple endemic milletseed butterflyfish

 But I didn't see my Stripeys!  I hope they're still there!  We only snorkeled for about 1 1/2 hours.  But it was nice getting back in the water even for a "short" amount of time!  We thought we'd head south and see if we could possibly snorkel there.  But the surf was really rolling at Poipu and Lawai.  So we ended up just sightseeing again.   Would have gone north to Anini, but we're heading North for a week tomorrow.  Hopefully Hurricane Lester won't interfer with our north snorkeling plans too much!
We did go check out the spouting horn.  It was spouting pretty good.

 I always like watching the water retreat back into the hole.

 There were several of these circular areas of rocks---I assume from lava flows.

 Driving back by Lawai.  There were a few snorkelers out there, but we didn't want to fight the surf to get back on shore.

 plus it was pretty choppy---just like Poipu.

 the side of Brenneke's beach.

 Ended up going to happy hour at Keoki's Paradise in Poipu got a late lunch/early dinner.

 But we were a little early so walked around the mall a bit.  Noticed the new Olympic Cafe there.  It looked really nice and they were having taco Friday.  I asked about other happy hour specials and she said all the appetisers were $6, but you had to buy 2 drinks each.  Maybe next time we'll try them for happy hour. 

We ended up with a buffet of pupus!  Garlic cheese fries, fish taco, pulled pork taco, hamburger slider, chips and salsa and prime rib bones.  Didn't really care for the slider with the weird sweet sauce on it, or the prime rib bones that were hard to get the meat off of.  They were good, just had to work to hard for it.  The fish tacos were really good as were the fries.  the chips and salsa were average.

 Love the ambience here, especially when they seat us right by the pond and there's a great breeze.

 We were going to try to hang around for sunset, but couldn't decide what to do.  Tried to go to Moir gardens, but there was a wedding going on there.  So we headed back to the East side.  Made a stop at K-mart to see if they had a long sleeved rash guard.  They did---now hopefully I'll get to use it!  We also went by Hamura Saimon to get my lilikoi pie!  It was the oddest looking piece of pie, but it was really good!

 We hadn't been up the Wailua Falls in a few Kauai trips, so decided to drive up there.  It was as beautiful as I remembered.

 As we were pulling into Kauai Beach Resort, we saw this guy run across the road and up the hill.

 I headed over to the beach by our villa to watch the waves and see if the sky was going to change colors.

 Did get a little color.

 I like how you can even have nice sunsets on the East side.

We ended up at the pool and jacuzzi for awhile.  That does it for another great day in Hawaii!