This ended up being the BEST Christmas present ever!
We had a super time in Hawaii. We flew out of Nashville Monday morning. There was weather and delays in Chicago so they rerouted us straight to LA. We had a 8 hour layover so we rented a car and toured LA. First stop Venice Beach. What a slice of 'culture' there. We enjoyed seeing the ocean though and saw a lot of interesting things. Next stop was In-N-Out burger for lunch - delicious!
Our last and best stop was the LA temple. What a contrast from Venice Beach. We really enjoyed the visitors center, and the temple is beautiful. At 8pm we took off for Kauai.
My cousin Mark was on the island for business and met us at the airport with leis for everyone. We arrived at 10:30pm, that was 2:30am to us, you can tell by the tired faces, but we were still super excited to be there.
We stayed in a condo in Princeville, a town on the north end of Kauai. It was a great set up, small, but enough beds for everyone. They even had a BBQ grill and everything we needed for the beach. We spent the first day checking out the island, finding good beaches, grocery shopping and enjoying the scenery. It was a bit overcast, but we enjoyed looking at the waves and did a little snorkeling that afternoon. For our first dinner we made fish tacos (fresh ahi - yum!), fresh pineapple, fresh papaya and drank guava and passion fruit juice - fantastic!
Each morning we ate pancakes with coconut syrup on them and we took a picnic with us for lunch, complete with guava and passion fruit juice, peanut butter and guava jam sandwiches and onion flavored Maui chips.
Wednesday we drove to the south of the island since it was raining on the north end. We saw the Spouting Horn - a famous blow hole and did more snorkeling in Poipu.
The girls really enjoyed becoming mermaids and I even got to see a whale breaching off shore.
That evening we went to a highly recommend pizza place. The shrimp pizza and bbq chicken pizza were terrific!
Thursday we spent the day at Hanalei Bay and broke out the boogie boards. The water was great and the weather was even better.
Emily catching a wave.
Sarah had a sweet ride.
Jumping waves was hours of fun.
Samantha got in on the action.
Jacob throwing a shaka as he surfed in.
Three at a time!
Hang Loose!
James didn't even lose his sunglasses or hat - very cool!
Kathryn rode it all the way to shore.
We made some good progress on a great sand castle and fell into bed that night happily exhausted.
Friday we hit the beach early. The waves were bigger than on Thursday at Hanalei Bay which made the boogie boarding fantastic!
The waves got bigger and bigger as the morning went on.
We watched surfers on the big (25ft) waves in the distance and enjoyed a super morning.
The girls loved jumping the waves together.
My, what large feet you have Emily!
Beautiful day.
Another mermaid, created by Kathryn.
That evening we headed to a luau. It was really neat.
They cooked the pig in a pit, taught us some great hula moves and put on a super show. The food was delicious and the kids tried everything that was offered - even the poi...
The family in front of a rubber tree.
Getting ready for the show. Mark joined us again that evening. It was really fun to have him come play with us when he didn't have to work.
Kauai has wild chickens all over the island. They are at the beach, the luau, the grocery store, the condo and along the side of the road. It was kind of fun to see them. We should have counted how many we saw, but that would have taken a lot of time, there were just so many.
Saturday we went to the Hanalei Farmer's Market.
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We met a really neat artist selling his jewelry, Keoni, the Kauai Carver. James bought me a pearl necklace - it is really pretty
We tried coconut milk straight from the coconut and ate the meat out of it when we were done.
While tasty, it really isn't as sweet as what you buy at the store - no sugar added. :)
No trip to Hawaii would be complete without shave ice - no misspelling there, that is what they call it. We went to Ono Ono Shave Ice - Ono means good in Hawaiian. The name didn't lie, they were really great, complete with ice cream in the bottom and sweetened condensed milk on top.
Kauai is very green and lush.
We checked out a cool cave, it made me wonder how many people have used it for shelter in the past.
Later that day we headed to Tunnels beach to check out the waves. The waves were really high and so we just took pictures and played in the sand. Those little dots are people, they look small next to the big waves. We enjoyed eating dinner on the beach, Hawaiian BBQ, then a sunset stroll finished off a wonderful day.
Sunday we attended the Hanalei Branch.
Love the blue roof. The other LDS chapel we saw had the same shade of blue on the shutters. What a great color, love it!
Happy Sunday in paradise.
After church we took a little drive to the south end of the island to check out the 'Grand Canyon' of Hawaii.
Pretty big climb from sea level to 3400 feet.
It was a bit windy up by the clouds.
On the way home we stopped at Glass Sand Beach. We just had to see it - the 'sand' is mostly made up of pieces of glass.
Way back when, this is where folks brought their glass to throw in the ocean, over time the broken pieces became more fine and now make an interesting beach.
Monday we tried to squeeze in a few more things before we headed to the airport
We stopped at the Kilauea Lighthouse, a landmark on the island.
Beautiful!
As luck would have it, a pod of whales were swimming by while we were there. This picture is of 2 whales, the side fin of one and the tail of another. We were really excited to see whales on this trip.
Our last stop before the airport was to pick up a totem for James. This is Leo, he carved it and put all of our names on the back. All the carvings mean something. This one has a happy face for a happy life, a turtle for a long life and other carvings for wisdom and love. It was really neat to meet the artist and watch him work, he was a great guy.
We came home to cold, cloudy weather - funny how quickly we acclimated to summer while we were there. A trip of a lifetime, we can't wait to go back.
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