Park City Spring Break in Kauai: The Three-Day Extension Strategy

By the time spring break rolls around in late March, our family is — there's no other word for it — fried. Charlie has been racing essentially every weekend since November. Wyatt has been at Woodward four days a week. Sean has been on what I am told is the most important quarter of his startup's life so far (he says this every quarter, but I no longer ask). I have hosted three dinner parties in February alone. We need a beach.

So we go to Kauai. We always go to Kauai. And we add three days to the front of spring break to skip the worst of the crowds and squeeze the most out of the trip before Charlie's spring race-circuit final stretch kicks in. Here's how it works.

The PC spring-break window

Park City School District puts spring break in late March or very early April depending on the year. Weilenmann mirrors it. So we're flying out exactly when half of Texas and California are also flying to Hawaii, which means the airfare is brutal and the rentals are picked clean by January.

Hanalei Bay sunset — Hanalei Bay at sunset — the photograph I have set as my screensaver since the first PC spring break we extended.

Solution: pull the kids out the Thursday and Friday before. We've done this three years running and it makes the entire trip more enjoyable. Cheaper flights, an emptier Kauai, and we get back into PC the Sunday before the official break ends, which gives us a buffer day at home.

The teacher email I send

I want to address this because I know moms in our PC group chat get nervous about pulling kids out of school. Here's the thing: Weilenmann is exceptional about this. The school is built around outdoor education and place-based learning. They genuinely believe travel is school. So when I email the teachers — about three weeks ahead — and say "the kids will be in Kauai Thursday-Sunday, can they bring anything with them?" the answer is invariably yes, and the assignments are actually creative.

North Shore beach palms — The north shore stretch we walk every morning — my "10,000 steps" excuse, with better light.

Last year Charlie had to do a one-page "observation" of an unfamiliar ecosystem. She wrote about the Hanalei taro fields. Wyatt's first-grade teacher just asked him to bring back five seashells and tell the class about each one. He got an A in show-and-tell.

Who we travel with

This trip is a tradition with the Wallaces — close friends from Palo Alto who relocated to PC about a year after we did. Their daughter Anna is Charlie's best friend; their son Theo is Wyatt's age and arguably more reckless. We have done Kauai with the Wallaces three years running. We rent two side-by-side houses on the north shore. There's a shared pool. The kids basically swap houses for the week. The adults rotate cooking nights.

Tropical mountains and ocean — The Na Pali coast view from our rental lanai — the line item that justifies everything.

Doing this trip with another PC family is the unlock. The kids entertain each other. The adults get actual conversation. Sean and Tom Wallace go surf at first light. Stephanie and I drink coffee on a lanai and pretend to read books we are not actually reading.

Hanalei Bay is the entire trip

We base on the north shore for one reason: Hanalei Bay. It is the most beautiful crescent of beach in the United States and I will die on this hill. The water is calm enough for Wyatt to bodyboard. The mountains behind it are absurd. There's a pier at the east end where the kids jump off until their lips turn blue.

Mornings: beach. Always. The kids are up at 6:30 anyway because of the time change, so we eat fruit on the lanai and then drift to the sand by 8.
Lunches: rotating. Ono Family Restaurant in Kapaa is our drive-day lunch — best loco moco of all time, the kids love the pancakes, the AC works in March which can't be guaranteed elsewhere. Hanalei Bread Company has the morning pastry game on lock.
Afternoons: pool, naps, the kids and the Wallaces' kids put on "shows" in the living room.
Evenings: we trade off cooking. Sean does fish tacos. Tom Wallace makes a chicken thing. Stephanie and I split the salad-and-wine duty (a 2020 Sancerre we keep buying by the case from a place in Hanalei).

Wyatt becomes a different child

This is the thing about Wyatt that I didn't expect. At home, he is a ski kid. Helmet, goggles, freestyle, terrain park, mud, snow, indoor focus, structured. In Kauai he becomes a beach kid. He bodyboards for hours. He gets brown. He naps on a towel. He talks about fish.

Family on beach at golden hour — Wyatt becoming a different child — six years old, salt-soaked, no schedule.

The first year we did this trip I sort of mourned it — like, where did my freestyle kid go? Now I see it as a release valve. He needs the warm-water version of himself for one week. He comes back to Park City re-set, the same way Charlie comes back from a Napa trip with quieter shoulders. Different kids, different breaks, same recovery.

What the trip costs (and why we still go)

I will be transparent: this is not a cheap trip. Two houses on the north shore for nine nights, four flights from SLC, rental cars, restaurants — it adds up. We do it instead of the spring ski trip a lot of PC families take to British Columbia or Japan. We see it as our "warm reset." And cutting the front three days of school and traveling slightly off-peak does drop the airfare and rental rates noticeably. Last year we saved roughly the cost of one of the houses just by going Thursday instead of the following Saturday.

Tropical cocktail and pupus — Bar Acuda happy hour — the Hanalei staple I will defend against any food editor.

Why we don't do Mexico, even though everyone here does

Half of Park City goes to Cabo or Punta Mita for spring break. We have been. It's lovely. But Cabo is full of Park City. We literally ran into three Weilenmann families at One&Only Palmilla one year and I felt like I had not actually left town.

Kauai feels farther. Kauai feels like a real exhale. And the Wallaces are there. So Kauai it is.

The race-circuit pivot

The minute we land back in SLC on Sunday, the spring race circuit picks up. Charlie has GS qualifiers most weekends through April. The Kauai trip is, in a real sense, fuel for the spring sprint. We need the kids rested. We need me rested for the carpool wars ahead. So we time the trip exactly right: end of February race fatigue, full reset in Kauai, back into PC on Sunday, race weekend the following Friday.

People ask me why we don't just do spring break at home — there's still snow, the kids could keep training, we could ski Deer Valley in slush. Truthfully, that's what most of our PC neighbors do. But Charlie and Wyatt need the off-season the way I needed Tahoe summers when I was their age. Hanalei is where they get it. By the time we're back in upper Park Meadows on Sunday night, both kids are tan, both kids are tired in the right way, and I'm uncorking a Sancerre to toast the start of the spring race grind. Three extra days. One Kauai. Worth every flight.