HAWAII!

You guys, YOU GUYS. We finally did it. We went to Hawaii! And I'm FINALLY posting the amazing details of the trip!

This trip had been anticipated for a solid 7 years. We had wanted to go for our honeymoon, but were too poor and young (young as in, we would have gotten screwed on a rental car since we were 20 and 22). Then we wanted to go for Philip's graduation a year and a half ago, but things just couldn't work out with scheduling and vacation days and whatnot, so we put it off again, and thought it was now out of the question since we'd have kids before we had a chance to go. Then last July, I had told a friend in my ward that we had always wanted to go, and that since she keeps an eye on flights, to let me know if any sales came up, not thinking much of it.

Then after we went to Utah last October, we decided that we kind of go on a lot of vacations, and that we should try to be a little more responsible and try to pay off our student loans a little faster than our current accelerated rate, which is no fun at all, but we figured that for our 10 year anniversary, we'd go, no matter what. Not a week later, my ward friend sent me a text telling me that Hawaiian airlines had a great sale! But...we had just decided to wait. But I wanted to go so bad. And my parents had just moved away and I was in such a funk. And all of our friends with kids told us to GO, and that we would never have a chance like this to be so worry free once we have kids. And I have a really nice husband. So we decided to go! And then we had three solid months of getting ourselves so excited for it!

So we left on Friday, February 3rd, and came home on Sunday, February 12th. Nothin' like taking advantage of two full weekends, huh? We figured that if we were going to go, go big or go home. So yes, 9 days was a little excessive, but what the heck, neither of us had ever been before and wanted to be sure we had enough time to do EVERYTHING we wanted!

At this point, I was deliriously excited. And I've never been on a big plane, so cool!

We went to Kauai, because we had heard such amazing things about it, and thought this would be our kind of island, just totally laid back. I booked our room through VRBO, and couldn't be happier with the deal I got on our hotel! Especially since this was the view from our balcony. Yep, that's the ocean right behind the pool. It was heavenly. It was just North of Lihue, which I felt was a great location too.

And our room was really nice too! It was just like a hotel room, so no kitchenette, but let's face it, I don't cook at home, so there is no way I would cook in Hawaii. :) It was perfect for what we needed.

After we checked in and dropped off our luggage, we went to Costco. Have you seen a prettier Costco? Just call me Melvin, of course that was our first stop! We got a case of water bottles for the week as well as some muffins for breakfasts, which I think was a smart choice so we weren't spending billions on water.

Then that first night, per my brother-in-law, Kirk's recommendation, we went to Duke's for dinner. We had been to the one in Huntington Beach just for the Hula Pie, so were looking forward to that more than dinner, but both of us were pleasantly surprised by how much we liked our dinner too! And talk about ambiance! There was this waterfall and coy pond going through the middle of the restaurant, all of it being open to the outside, and the other side was a half wall, with the rest being open to the ocean! It was amazing.

HULA PIE! Oreo crust, macadamia nut ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream and macadamia nuts on top. It was amazing. I can't wait to get another piece when we go to California this summer.

Then we walked out of the restaurant, and like eight steps to the sand, which could have been like five if you took big steps. It was in this cool little bay but was fairly crowded for our taste.

That night when we got back to our hotel, we walked around the pool then out to the beach. They had beach chairs all along the grass leading up to the sand so we just laid on them for a little while and were super cheesy and looked at the stars. Have I ever mentioned that Philip and I are super nerdy and love looking at the stars when we are out of big cities? It's awesome.

The next day, we had it in our mind to go to beaches. It was a beautiful sunny day, but with it being February, the ocean was angry pretty much everywhere you go, so we never went in much further than our legs. We went to a beach called Donkey Beach, where you park, take a 10 minute walk and find a perfect and isolated beach. Seriously, there were like 4 kids surfing, a guy and his dog, and us. It was perfect.

The only not perfect thing about it was on the hike down and back, there were GIGANTIC spiders! There were cobwebs basically anywhere there was greenery, and there was greenery everywhere, so yes, spiders everywhere. Ugh. But better than cockroaches.

After sitting on the beach and reading for a little while, we decided to go grab lunch and try a couple other beaches. We went  to Bubba's Burgers, which has a pretty sweet view, and pretty decent burgers. They are fairly basic, but pride themselves on having celebrities eat and love their burgers.

Then we drove down to Poipu, and I couldn't get enough of these clouds and mountains and greenery.

It was crazy to me that such a small island could have so many mountains and such diverse landscape!

The road to Poipu is lined by trees for a solid half mile, which I thought was incredible.

We got down to Poipu Beach Park and it was SOOO crowded. Both Philip and I thought, why in the world would we fight for a spot here when there are beaches like Donkey beach? It was also super windy, and the sand was whipping up and sand blasting our legs, so we decided to do a little shopping then head back to our hotel and go to dinner.

That night we went to Monaco's Taqueria for dinner, and both Philip and I decided to be daring and try fish. Now we are not seafood people. At all. And people always would say, "No, you just need to have fresh seafood, and you'll like it." But my concern was this: does fresh mean more fishy? I was seriously nervous. So I ended up getting a tostada with fresh Ahi Tuna and Philip got shrimp tacos, because we both figured that if we didn't like the fish, we could take it off and eat everything else. Much to both of our delights though, it was great! My fish tasted more like steak, and Philip loved his shrimp, and I was so proud of myself for trying something new and liking it so much! Go me.

The next morning, we decided it would be a hiking/waterfall/swimming day. It was kind of overcast in the morning when we left, but we hoped it would blow over by the time we got to our hikes. We first attempted Kipu Falls, which we had heard rave reviews about.

And doesn't it look amazing?  Unfortunately, one too many people have died on it, and after driving 25 minutes to get there, learned it was closed. Waah.

After being totally bummed about that, we were off to find our next hike. We were using the Kauai Ultimate Guide Book (thank you again Robin!), and the directions said to go down this road until we see the dirt road on the left. So we drive, no dirt road. We park, we walk around forever trying to find a trail head, get back in the car, drive back and forth again and again, and like 30 minutes later, when we were on the brink of giving up, we FINALLY find the "dirt road" that looked more like an overgrown path mostly hidden from view! I was so glad that Philip asked me if I wanted to look one last time otherwise both activities planned for the day would have been a bust. So we are hiking, and the clouds from earlier turned into rain, which meant we were kind of soaking without even swimming, but were so glad to finally find our waterfall!

 

So much for wearing swim suit and swim shorts, since absolutely no swimming happened that day!

 

And Philip was forever afraid that I was going to die while trying to get close to the water. Bless him for caring.

 

On our way back we saw the coolest trees! I didn't get a picture, but made Philip take a video, which he was none too thrilled with.

That night we went to Kauai Pasta, which I am still dreaming about because it was THAT delicious.

My fettuccine alfredo was positively swimming in sauce. After eating almost all of it, I was temped to just drink the sauce with a straw, it was so thick and creamy but still had really good flavor!

Philip's cheese ravioli was almost too pretty to eat. I said almost though, because of course we finish our food.

The next morning, our bodies told us that they NEEDED more carbs. Because the pasta from the night before wasn't heavy enough to paralyze us, so we needed a little more. We went to a breakfast place called Eggberts, which was recommended by the dentist I worked for. I got a short stack, but Philip thought he could eat three pancakes. Until they got to him. Those things were the size of his head! Needless to say, he couldn't finish it, but banana pancakes with coconut syrup were his kryptonite, and we ended up going back to Eggberts twice more that week.

My macadamia nut pancakes with coconut syrup were bananas. As in amazing. Not really banana.

 After breakfast we got ready for snorkeling which would be happening a little later, but made sure we left with enough time to go to Shipwreck beach and see the Makewehi Lithified Cliffs. Apparently people used to jump off that giant cliff, so we decided to give it a go. Okay not really. But does that lady in this picture kill you? She just stood there and looked and smiled at us taking pictures. Really?

Philip was pissed that I made him take off his sunglasses for this picture. It was sunny, and I apparently was trying to blind him.

\

After the Lithified cliffs we went to the Spouting Horn, where I took a lot of pictures.

Basically the water goes up under the rocks somehow and makes a blowhole type thing. It was actually pretty cool.

And even better is that as we were watching this thing, we watched an older woman take a picture of it with her iPad. Does anyone else think that taking pictures with iPads is the most hilarious thing ever? Because Philip and I were dying laughing.

And then we were finally ready to go snorkeling! I heard of this snorkel tour from a patient and then found it on Yelp as well, and it was great! It was through Kauai Sea Rider Adventures, where Captain Tara, who is a marine biologist, took us into the middle of the ocean and took us whale watching too!

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And we can all be glad that she provided wet suit tops for us, because let's face it, I look great in it. I mean, the only thing that could have been better is if the bottom half was also included, right?

Okay, this video is kind of long, but we had dolphins swimming all around us! They almost looked fake just jumping so perfectly in threes and right by us!

And then she stopped the boat right above some deep reefs where tons of turtles live and they just mosey on up to the surface for air, one after another after another, and Philip got great video of these turtles that were all around us!

We worked up a bit of an appetite snorkeling, and NEEDED some shaved ice. We stopped at Kalapaki Joe's and the best part of shaved ice in Hawaii is that underneath all of that ice and delicious flavor is a giant scoop of ice cream! It was delicious.

And for dinner, we went to PukaDogs and got some yummy hot dogs. I don't even like hot dogs but the bread on these dogs was amazingly soft and delicious. I love vacation food.

The next day we went Kayaking up the Wailua River, and as luck would have it, it was raining again. So once again our swim suits and shorts were completely unnecessary, but it's what we had.

After a 2 1/2 mile kayak, and the most ridiculously sore arms and shoulders that I could ever imagine, we hiked another mile or so to another waterfall called The Secret Falls.

Sara saw this picture of me and asked if I had a gigantic zit or boil or something gross on my shoulder. Then answer is no. It's just my shoulder bone, but yeah, it looks kind of like I have a cyst or something weird.

We had thought that we might swim in the water under the Secret Falls, but after getting rained on and hiking through damp jungle, I just wanted to find a warm rock in the sun and eat my lunch and try to dry off before we went back to get more wet.

Ahhh! It's a snake! Okay, not really, it's just a weird vine thing that wrapped itself around another tree.

But look, it even looks like it has a head!

This is called a Walking Tree. The roots grow above the ground. Weird, huh?

Then we walked through this crazy awesome field that had such lush greenery that I felt like I was in Lost, or Jurrasic Park, or any of the other movies that were filmed on the island.

And back to the kayaks, where I was soooo thrilled to have to paddle back down the river.

That afternoon we went back to our hotel and warmed up in the hot tub, which we did almost every day when we got back to our hotel, and then again at night time after dinner. Now I totally want to get our hot tub up and running at home so we can get in every night. Anyway, that night we went to the Brick Oven Pizza for dinner and it was fine. Nothing so amazing that I had to take a picture of.

They next day, we didn't have any big adventure-type plans, instead we had super touristy plans. So after breakfast at Kountry Kitchen (which is not as good as Eggberts, so pass on it when you go) we took a boat in the afternoon up the Wailua River to see the Fern Grotto. And in case you were wondering, we were by far the youngest people on the island the entire week we were there. At first I was a little nervous about feeling kinda chubby in my swim suit, but I kid you not, everyone we were with was in their 70's, which made me feel absolutely dynamite in a swim suit. An amazing confidence booster for sure.

We're on a boat.

The Fern Grotto was really cool, it is this little grotto in the side of a cliff, that has ferns just growing out of the rock. It was amazing. It is kind of one of those things though that looks a lot cooler in person than in these pictures. Dang it.

These flowers were called Ginger flowers and I was OBSESSED with them.

Christmas card 2012. Act surprised when you get it.

We had a bit of time to kill between the Fern Grotto and the Luau, so we went back to this little ice cream shop that we had gone to the day before, that had delicious cookies and cream.

We had friends recommend that we go to Smith's Luau. What's funny is that it is the most white sounding name ever, but it is this huge Hawaiian family that has been doing these luaus for years and years, and have a 5 acre garden that has all different kinds of plants from different parts of the world.

And of course I took pictures of flowers, surprise surprise.

Then they brought us together for the getting-the-pig-out-of-the-pit ceremony, which we thought was cool.

And then served us that pig for dinner! I very much appreciated that they took it back to a kitchen to make it pretty to eat so I didn't actually have to think about the pig I just saw coming out of the dirt as I inhaled my pork. The food was REALLY good, and there was tons of it. Since our ticket price included an open bar for everyone else, we made sure to get our money's worth of food and Diet Coke.

After dinner, where they had light entertainment, they sent us out to the stage for the real show. I was impressed by the size of the production and the dancers. Dang those girls can move!

Uh, yeah, there was a freaking volcano in our show. Freaking awesome.

It was such a fun night ! I would absolutely recommend Smith's Luau to anyone! They had the perfect mix of cultural dancing, humor, good food, pretty gardens and you felt totally fine with how "touristy" everything was!

The next day, we drove up to Princeville, which is on the North side of the island to go ZIP LINING! Before we left, I wasn't sure that I would be able to talk Philip into this since he's not the biggest fan of heights, but once we got there and were deciding what adventures we needed to go on, we realized that this would surely be an experience like none other. 

Here we are all geared up and ready to go!

 The tour we did was supposed to be a total of 9 zip lines, but our tour guides were super cool, and our group was small and full of young people, so they decided to take us on the King Kong, which is a super awesome 1200 foot long, side by side zip line TWICE! Philip and I both videoed it, but because the videos are kind of super long, they are refusing to upload to blogger. And for some reason the videos from my phone aren't uploading either. Hmm. So, here I am on I think the second line, which is super short, but you can kind of get the idea. 10 runs on the zip lines, one suspension bridge, swimming and lunch at a secret little water hole, and a fun time had by all.

Luckily I took actual pictures of Philip on this one! I went across first, and here he is getting all strapped in and ready to go!

I think you get the idea of how beautiful this was, going over all these incredible valleys of trees and lush greenery...AMAZING.

It was such a fun morning, that I didn't think the day could get any better! But, since vacation life is forever the best thing ever, we decided to stop at a little fruit stand where the lady introduced us to rambutan. Holy heavenly little fruit! It is a red rubbery spiky fruit that you peel off and has a middle that is kind of like a grape, but then has a large pit in the middle. And they are delicious!

We also got smoothies from them and hung out in a little gazebo while enjoying the perfect weather.

From there we went to see the Kilauea Lighthouse, which sits serenely on a cliff, and looks like a postcard.

And 10 minutes from there we went to the secret beach, which had a 10 minute hike down this jungle path, that started by this house. Can you imagine living here? The house is on stilts for crying out loud!

Anyway, the path was super jungle-esque, and then out of nowhere it opens up to this huge beach that is absolutely perfect! It is once again pretty much deserted, and it had awesome lava rocks that the waves were crashing on fantastically.

I asked a stranger to take our picture, and he ended up taking three, finally satisfied with this one because he got crashing waves behind us. Not going to lie, I kind of love it!

That night after heading back to our hotel to get showered and whatnot, we went to Vinny B's, which serves Italian food that we had passed several times. And truthfully, we probably should have kept passing it, because it wasn't that great. And it was SOOO slow and I was starving and almost started gnawing on the table by the time our food came.

Friday morning, we went to Eggberts again, per Philip's request, since he couldn't stop thinking about those banana pancakes. We then kind of lazed around the pool in the morning, went to lunch and got THE MOST DELICIOUS and fatty cheeseburger I've ever had at Kalapaki Joe's. The one I got was called, "The Hut" which might tell you a little bit about how ladylike this thing was. It was amazing, and I ate it all. We went back to the pool for a little while to work off our cheeseburgers by laying out, then got ready to go on a little ride ho ho. We drove to the West side of the island to drive up Waimea Canyon, which is known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. We had read about a great shaved ice place, and since we figured it would be closed by the time we were done with the canyon, we decided to stop and get some.

And then we started driving the 18 miles of windy roads up the canyon, taking all of the touristy stops and taking pictures at each of them. This was stop #1:

Stop #2:

Please note how many chickens and roosters there are in the parking lot. Those birds seriously are going to take over the island. And they don't move for you and aren't afraid of you. It's annoying.

And stop #3:

This one was by far my favorite, it being at the very top, and you could see the edge of the cliffs that the Na Pali coast are famous for.

Uh-maze-ing.

That night on our way back, we stopped at Pizzetta for dinner, where the food was mediocre and the service was terrible, and then did a little shopping while we were there. Then once again we went back to our hotel and to the hot tub to rest up from our exhausting day of eating and driving. :)

On Saturday, it was our last full day in Hawaii, and we decided to do something that we would never do in real life. So we got a couple's massage in the morning. It was fantastic. And after it was done, Philip said to me, "Was that the fastest hour of your life?" On our way back from the massages, we stopped by a little farmer's market, where Philip fulfilled his dream of having someone cut open a coconut for him and drinking out of it with a straw.

He didn't really know what to expect, and poor thing was kind of disappointed since it is kind of disgusting. Then he took it back to the coconut chopping lady and she cut it open so he could eat the fleshy part, and it was also kind of disgusting. But yay for a Hawaiian experience!

And we found more of our delicious rambutans! I felt all hippy dippy wearing a skirt, with my hair all blowing everywhere, buying fruit at a farmer's market, and I'm not going to lie, I kind of liked the feeling. It's one I could definitely get used to!

On the way back we stopped and took a couple pictures of the rice and taro fields with the clouds sitting on the mountains behind them.

And then as a last stop, we drove to the Wailua Falls, which is one of the only waterfalls you can just drive to and gawk at. It was pretty and we gawked.

And that night, we were kind of burned out on trying new places and spending a bundle on restaurants, so we went to the ever satisfying Taco Bell, because we're classy like that.

But don't forget our rambutans! We ate them all for dessert back at our hotel. They were tasty.

Here's what they look like when you peel the outside off

And then the nut type pit on the inside! Definitely a fun and tasty fruit.

Our last morning, we went BACK TO EGGBERTS, so Philip could gently break it to his beloved banana pancakes that even though he loves them dearly, that he couldn't have them again after that day. It was a sad moment for him, until he ate them and had a full and happy belly.

And last, but not least, a little Hawaiian love. At the beginning of the week, Philip jokingly said to me, "Let's hold hands everywhere we go on this vacation!" And I got really excited until I realized he was poking fun at my love for PDA. But in the end, he did hold hands like half the time, which is him totally taking one for the team.

It was such a fantastic vacation, but we were definitely ready to come back home! We feel so lucky that we are able to have these fun vacations together and enjoy being just us for now. Sometimes when I look at these pictures I can't believe how much I love my life. :)