Kauai and Visits

Hanalei Bay in Kauai

In June Jake left for Korea for a few weeks.  He shared these lovely pictures from Seoul and elsewhere.

But the boys and I had the pleasure of having a few visits.  One of my college roommates and her boys came and visited.  She has two little guys that my boys had a blast playing with.  We went to the lighthouse and then  took them to Bellows and played in the sand.

Licorice and sand....such a yummy combo.

Then our cousins came for a visit and the boys loved having more friends to play with.

Rub a dub dub, 4 men in a tub

Nap time at the park

Baby talk

Comforting a sick cousin

We made peanut butter play dough: 3 marshmallows, 3 tablespoons pb.  Melt in microwave 10 seconds, then stir in a tbs of powdered sugar.  The perfect edible play dough.

Cousin cuddles

And then when Jake got back we headed to Kauai for another adventure with cousins.  This was a dream vacation.  We saw so many beautiful sights

Opaeka'a Falls

Spouting Horn

Louis loved the swinging bridge in Historic Hanapepe

One of the things we talked about doing even before we knew we wer coming to Kauai was going to the glass beach or Ele'ele Beach.  Driving up to it we thought we were going into some industrial park, but the beach was lovely and the first partially black sand beach I had ever seen.  It was awesome.  These pictures do not do it justice for how colorful the glass sand was.

The other side of the beach

A playground at a beach park in Lihue

Late dinner in Hanalei

Had to take a picture of this HUGE pineapple.  It was soooo good.

A little waterfall we found on our drive up to Waimea Valley

Waimea is the Grand Canyon of Hawaii, and is about as breathtaking as the real Grand Canyon.  While not as large it is crazy impressive and beautiful.

After the lookouts we took everyone on a hike down Canyon trail, where we hiked to the top of the waterfall pictured in the above photos.   It was a pretty spectacular hike.

A little waterfall above the big one

Crystal at the top of the massive waterfall into Waimea.  It was an amazing view.  None of the pictures really do it justice.

 Hanelai bay was a beautiful beach.  We all loved it.  It may quite possible be my favorite Hawaiian beach so far.

  

Overlooking Hanalei Bay

We visited the Kilauea Lighthouse and National Wildlife Reserve.  It had so many large sea birds.  It was cool to see them nesting along the coast.  The lighthouse was beautiful as well.

A view from a lookout

A scenic byway on our way back to Kipa'a from the north shore.

This is a lookout along the east shore

This guy came up to our door one night to say hello.

Wailua Falls

 We took a Na'Pali Coast Boat tour.  It was a 5 hour boat tour so we were nervous with kids, but everyone loved it.  We had a blast seeing the beautiful cliffs and saw lots of wildlife.  We saw turtles and dolphins.  We also went snorkeling for a bit after going down along the coast.  It was definitely a highlight of the trip.

Na Pali Coast in the background

We saw lot's of dolphins

Back a the boat launch

We saw a seal at Poipu beach.  Jake and I even swam with one while we were snorkeling.

 Clark, Crystal and I took an early morning hike at Kalepa Ridge.  It was awesome.  I love hiking, but this one had all the best parts of hiking: views the whole way, more wow factor at the end than expected, and the workout that I love.  If only it had been a bit longer.  It was however a bit scary.  There were parts where spikes were definitely needed.  We were on a pretty narrow ridge.  But luckily the conditions were perfect and we were early enough we were alone on the trail.  The pictures on this hike are all courtesy of Clark and Crystal.  I didn't have a camera with me.

Right at the end you could look across at the Na'Pali coast.

On our flight home we let these two sit next to each other.  They loved the plane rides, but glad they were only 20 minutes.

Sporting our Korean shirts from Daddy

Our trip to Kauai was perfect and we are so glad we could do it.  We are glad we got to share the experince with Clark and Janelle and their family and Crystal.  Our boys had a blast.