They don’t call Kauai the Garden Island for nothing

Not sure what the weather is like in Spokane. (That's a lie. According to Weather.com, it's 33 degrees and snowing.) But I can tell you that today, in Kauai, the sun played tag with clouds, the rain held off, and tropical breezes made life just about perfect. Which is why I posted the above photo, which I took in Princeville, looking west-northwest as the sun dipped below the cliffs that turn into the Napali Coast.

Yeah. I'm on Kauai, also known as Hawaii's Garden Island. My wife and I arrived here following our visits to Shanghai and Hong Kong and we'll spend our last few days here, trying to soak up as much sun as we can before heading back to … the cold.

We arrived in Honolulu to a situation heavy with irony. After finding it easy to navigate airports in airports where the native language was either Mandarin or Cantonese, and not everyone we worked with spoke English, we found ourselves stumped in the Hawaiian Airlines terminal of the Honolulu International Airport. Machines, no desks with live human begins. And a curious lack of signage telling us exactly what to do. All that, complicated by jet lag, and we found ourselves wishing we were back in China.

I've lived in Hawaii. On Oahu, for four years, before, during and after it became a state. So, yes, I know it is part of the U.S. At times, though, Hawaii does feel like a foreign country. 

Despite the problems. we made our flight, which would take about the same time as flying from Spokane to Moses Lake. And barely a half hour later we were landing at Lihue Airport. Since then, things have gotten progressively better. It rained on and off our first day, and today gave new meaning to the phrase "partly sunny." But we took our rental car for a ride, hit the beach at Haena State Park and took in that gorgeous sunset.

The day's highlight: having lunch at Tahiti Nui, the bar/cafe that was featured in Alexander Payne's 2011 film "The Descendants." As we ate our sandwiches, served to us by a hardworking yet friendly waitress, I kept looking for signs of Clooney's presence. But, of course, he was nowhere to be seen. Nor were the stars of the some 76 other movies filmed, even if only partly, on Kauai. Such as Sam Neil from "Jurassic Park." Kathleen Turner in "Body Heat." Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides." Harrison Ford in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." And so on.

Later, though, as we sat on the lanai of the St. Regis Princeville Resort (no, we aren't staying there) and watched the sun drop below the horizon, I thought again of Clooney and the many movie stars who have enjoyed this paradise called Kauai. And I raised my glass to the notion that I was enjoying it, too.