It seems to me, after looking at a map, that all areas of the island would be accessible for day trips from wherever we set up a home base. We did this on the Big Island and this one is smaller.

Stayed at Poipu beach, which I'm sure has changed a lot. Was very sparsely used when we were there.

http://www.travelchannel.com/interests/beaches/articles/poipu-beach-hawaii

I suggest you cross-post this in Hawaii group.

It was very nice but I believe it was taken down pretty badly by Iniki?

We stayed just South of Wailua. Beautiful area, very lush and green. MacDonald's near at hand. It was a mess though.

the year before Iniki.

I was attending a summer seminar for language teachers at the University of Hawaii, and they gave us a four-day weekend for the 4th of July, so my roommate and I took advantage of a special package deal for Kauai, including hotel, 48 hours of car rental, and roundtrip airfare.

We stayed in a Radisson resort on the eastern shore, which had an ocean front but no beach. On the first day we drove up to the Na Pali cliffs. The ocean there is really shallow, so we could wade quite far out to see them.

The next day, we headed south to a secluded beach that offered a view of the privately owned island of Niihau and then to Waimea, which gets only 25" of rain per year. Then we drove inland through sugar cane fields, evergreen forests, and into the real jungle-like area around Waimea Canyon. Just a few miles inland from Waimea, it gets over 300" of rain per year.

That road ends at the TOP of the Na Pali cliffs, so we got a view of the cliffs we had seen from the bottom the day before.

We had dinner at Poipu Beach.

It leaves from Port Allen. Am going to check that out.

It has great gardens, nice places to swim and snorkle (turtles!), you can take a boat to cliffs, see whales, very nice. There are farmers markets daily, roadside fish taco stands, and not a lot of night life unless you go to one of the big hotels.

I very much liked it. Indeed rent a car, and if wherever you are has bad weather, you can always drive somewhere else to find sun. And don't forget the fish taco stands.

I do love fish tacos.