Month: August 2019

I love this pie chart!

After multiple airline trips, hotel stays, and rental cars this year– all booked through Expedia– I wanted to check my status in their rewards program.

WOW! After spending nearly $5,000 on travel, I have almost two dollars to redeem for my next airline ticket or whatever. First class, here I come.

Me: Hey Kyra, I’m pretty awesome, right?
Kyra (after a pause): Eh.

As the final installment in my Hawai’i saga, I have a random collection of photos from the trip.

During our layover at LAX, we had to get some dinner. There were three choices for restaurants, and Shake Shack seemed like the best option. As it turned out, it was the saddest burger I’ve seen in a long time.

Here are Alex and Kyra on the hike to Queen’s Bath:

While we were looking down at Wailua Canyon, we saw a guy pull up in an old beat-up Prius. The entire back half of the car was filled with coconuts. It looked totally sketchy.

Notice the rooster. They’ve pretty much taken over the island, and you see them everywhere. Sidewalks, along the road, parking lots, and anywhere there’s a flat surface, there are roosters and hens prancing around clucking. Kyra wasn’t at all pleased when she was awakened (every day) by the cock-a-doodle-doo of roosters at 5am.

Anyway, back to the coconuts. We talked to the guy, who apparently climbs the trees each morning and cuts down big bunches of coconuts. He pulled out a machete and proceeded to deliver a series of well-placed whacks to one of them. La and I both enjoyed a drink of fresh coconut milk.

I’m not normally a fan of coconuts, but there’s something about drinking it right out of a freshly-harvested one. Good stuff.

One afternoon we didn’t have any firm plans, so we headed down to a bike shop and rented cruiser bikes. They were pretty sweet.

There’s a nice bike trail along the eastern coast of Kaua’i, so we went about five miles up the shore. Not surprisingly, we saw some amazing beaches (several of which we’d visited earlier).

Oh, that blue. I love it.

We also partook of the traditional Hawai’ian shave ice (not shaved ice):

Sweet glory, that stuff is amazing. Laralee complained that it was “too sweet” (whatever that means). The kids and I absolutely loved them.

True shave ice is completely unlike a snow cone, and this particular roadside stand knew how to pump just enough liquid sugar to completely saturate the ice. Perfect!

In addition to the prolific chickens, I noticed a ton of wild cats. They’d just sit around outside stores, at roadside stands, or wherever. I’m not sure if they dined on chicken much, but there sure were a lot of them. Here’s one surveying his (her?) domain at a roadside park.

Laralee and I had opportunities to take nice walks along the beach. I figure that’s part of a healthy marriage: take your wife to Hawai’i and go to the beach.

The road along the southern coast of Maui has some really cool black-rock beaches, where the rocks are roughly the size of bowling balls.

When the waves come in, the rocks roll around and make a loud rumbling sound. It’s very different from the quieter rattling of finer sand in places like Waianapanapa.

In the photo above, part of the road is visible along the edge of the cliff. Much of the southern highway is a one-lane road that hugs the cliffs along the shore, with a sheer drop to the ocean (at times, hundreds of feet straight down). It’s a bit of a white-knuckle drive, but absolutely gorgeous.

Speaking of gorgeous, here’s Laralee with her wind blowing gently in the sea breeze.

At one point I noticed some waves hitting the rocks particularly hard, so I hiked over to take a look.

I got a bit too close.

On our last day in Kaua’i, I convinced Laralee and Alex to join me on the Kuamo’o Trail to the top of some cliffs overlooking the Wailua Valley. The trail was pretty crazy, snaking amongst towering grass.

We didn’t make it to the top, because we had to turn around so we could check out of our house on time. But we were rewarded with a nice view of Wailua and Kapa’a.

What an incredible trip. I’m thrilled we were able to go, and to take our kids. With Alex getting married next week and Zaque heading out on a mission next month, this will be the last time just the five of us can be together. Hawai’i is truly a paradise, and I can’t wait to return.

What does one do in Koloa? Ziplining, of course! The famous Koloa Zipline company operates there, and they have eight separate lines with the final one stretching just shy of half a mile. We’d heard it was a ton of fun, so we signed up.

Our guides took some photos of us before our first run.

And off we go!

We had a great time. Near the end we took a group photo, with the Waita Reservoir in the background (and beyond that, the ocean).

Since parts of Jurassic World were filmed on the land owned by Koloa Zipline, apparently it’s a tradition to take a dinosaur photo too.

Holding a plastic toy dinosaur close to the camera isn’t quite the level of special effects in Jurassic World, but I guess you work with what you have…

Not to be confused with Waimea (I kept mixing up the names), Wailua is a river and valley in eastern Kaua’i. One morning we decided to rent some paddleboards and go upriver. The current is really slow, so it’s more or less like being on a lake.

At first, as we headed out from shore, we were all a little wobbly on the boards. They were surprisingly unstable, although I attribute some of that to the fact that they’re sort of cheap rentals.

After a while, all of us got our sea legs and were able to paddle with ease. Kyra shows off her technique:

Like everything in Kaua’i, green is abundant. The river winds between tree-covered hills in an idyllic setting.

At times it was nice to just relax on the board and let the current gently push us along.

Here’s a view of part of the river from above:

Although I would’ve preferred to kayak, the Wailua River is restricted and you pretty much have to go with a tour group. We much preferred doing our own thing on paddleboards. It was really cool, and a great way to spend a morning.

We spent a lot of time at beaches during our two weeks in Hawai’i. All of us loved playing in the waves and just relaxing in the sand.

Inevitably, people were buried in the sand. Kyra insisted it was surprisingly comfortable, and it certainly kept her from getting sunburned.

Here’s Zaque as he attempts to “break out” by sheer strength:

A random shot of a wave slithering along the smooth sand:

We saw all kinds of little sand crabs. These guys were maybe an inch across, and they blended into the sand almost perfectly. You couldn’t really see them until they moved, and when they did, they were fast!

We did some snorkeling, but it wasn’t very popular with this crowd. I think we might’ve enjoyed it more if we’d been in places where there were substantially larger reefs.

Here’s Kyra diving for a closer look:

We saw a few sea turtles, which are always fun.

Riding the waves is always a hit. I was standing next to Laralee as one came in:

She went down. And so did I.

Zaque takes one in the back:

This time I caught a good hit to Laralee:

We tried boogie-boarding at a few of the beaches, but couldn’t quite master it. Alex seemed to do the best.

Laralee caught a big wave and tumbled hard. Afterward she looked a bit washed-up.

(She swore off boogie-boarding after that incident.)

Alex and Zaque both had fun rolling with the waves. They’d lay on the shore, just above the waterline, and wait for a big wave to come in and sweep them away. Here’s Alex getting rolled:

And Zaque’s swimsuit model pose. I promised him this will be in our family Christmas card.

Alex found a coconut floating on the waves:

These guys are formidable. He and Laralee spent a good five minutes smashing it on a rock and tearing at it to get it open.

Finally they were rewarded with some fresh coconut milk!

One of the places we went on Kaua’i was called Queen’s Bath. It came highly recommended, not only in our guidebook but also by several friends. It was, bar none, the muddiest trail I’ve ever hiked (even muddier than Haleakala, which we’d done a few days earlier). Zaque didn’t have shoes so he did the whole thing barefoot, including walking across the sharp lava rocks at the shore. When we finally arrived at Queen’s Bath, he expressed our opinion pretty succinctly:

Maybe on a “good day” it’s a cool area, but that day it was more like a tepid, stagnant pond. No thanks.

In the end, if you finish the day with sandy feet, it was probably a good day.

Waimea Canyon is known as the “Grand Canyon of Hawai’i” and it’s easy to see why. It cuts a deep swath through southwest Kaua’i and is majestic. We drove up the canyon road, and I was telling Laralee to stop at nearly every pullout so I could climb up the embankment and look at the vista.

Kyra was unimpressed, and stayed in the car.

As we neared the top of the canyon, we literally drove up into a cloud. Much of the higher altitudes in Kaua’i seem to be enveloped in clouds pretty often, due to all the moisture in the air. At first it looked like nothing more than a light fog…

… but when we started hiking the Pu’u o Kila trail, the clouds thickened and soon we were unable to see the canyon at all.

Interestingly, the edge of the trail dropped off as a sheer cliff. Although we couldn’t see into the canyon itself, it was obvious we were standing at the top of a vertical wall at least several hundred feet high.

At times, the forest had kind of an eerie otherworldly quality about it:

But wait! Laralee saw a break in the clouds.

Sure enough, the air cleared a bit and we had a view along the canyon toward the Na Pali Coast:

It was fleeting– the clouds dissipated for only a few minutes, but what they revealed was spectacular.

Then they closed in again, and we were wreathed in fog once again. It was really interesting to hike in these conditions.

At times I thought maybe we’d get a good view, but even at the Pihea lookout at the “top” of the trail, it was almost entirely enveloped in clouds.

I’d hoped that during the hike we’d get a break, but alas, the cloud cover persisted. We hiked back down the trail and managed to catch one last glimpse toward the coast:

Although the clouds provided interesting scenery, I was disappointed not to see the entire view. Next time, we decided, we’d come in the morning rather than waiting until the afternoon when the clouds roll in.

Driving back down the road afforded a couple more amazing shots.

Like the Na Pali Coast, this is a place I definitely want to return to, and take some of the dozen or so more serious hikes. Amazing stuff.

After a week in Maui, we island-hopped over to Kaua’i. On our last trip to the state, we’d visited O’ahu and while that was cool, we wanted to see something new. On our first full day there, we hopped aboard a helicopter tour.

It lasted a little less than an hour, but it was probably one of the most amazing hours of my life. The scenery was without equal. We saw more waterfalls than I could believe, and I found myself breathing “wow” almost every time we swooped around a cliff into another valley.

The cliffs were steep and completely covered in green, with rivers and streams flowing through them.

So many waterfalls!

As we continued toward the western edge of Kaua’i, the cliffs became steeper.

The wide-angle lens on my camera couldn’t even capture the scene from top to bottom.

We cruised through canyons whose sheer walls were, in some cases, almost half a mile tall.

And then we arrived at the Na Pali Coast.

Words (and photos) don’t do it justice. The cliffs are towering and the water is a breathtaking shade of turquoise.

Check out the tiny boat for scale:

Along the shoreline are beaches and caves, many with waterfalls.

Indescribable.

Some of the waterfalls literally spring from the side of the cliffs, with no source above them. The water at the top of the mountain– one of the wettest spots on the planet– trickles down into the rock and can take decades to eventually work through to the rock face where it gushes out as a waterfall.

After seeing it, I decided then and there I want to hike or kayak along the coast. It’s a journey of several days, but the chance to stop at caves and camp on the beach would be an amazing experience. Laralee agreed to do it with me, so now I have a new item for my bucket list.

There’s nowhere quite like Na Pali.

Haleakala is the mountain in the center of Maui, a long-extinct volcano that towers over the island and has a profound effect on the climate. The area to the north and east is incredibly wet (one of the wettest places on earth) while south and west is much drier. It makes for a fascinating drive to essentially circle the mountain, taking the Road to Hana along the north shore, and then highway 360 on the south shore.

The mountain is part of a national park, and the southeast entrance is at Ohe’o Gulch. Despite the name, it has a majestic shoreline.

Alex hiked out a bit to get a closer look:

Kyra snapped a shot of me and Laralee:

And I couldn’t resist one of her looking out over the ocean.

A short hike unveils even more incredible shoreline.

Looking inland, you can see the so-called Seven Sacred Pools. There aren’t seven, and you can’t swim in them, so it’s a bit of a misnomer.

We headed up the trail, which was the muddiest trail I’ve ever hiked. This area of Maui gets an unbelievable amount of rainfall, and after a while we stopped even trying to keep our shoes and feet clean. We stopped for a quick photo at a massive banyan tree:

Eventually we arrived at the bamboo forest, which as always was awesome. There’s something about all those tall trees crammed together, waving gently in the breeze and making a strange knocking sound.

At the end of the trail is Waimoku Falls, cascading nearly five hundred feet down a sheer cliff face.

What a beautiful national park!