Highlights from Hawaii

It seems now that hawaii was just a dream. Was I really there a month ago? It seems like forever ago, my tan has faded, I can no longer taste the toasted coconut ice ceam, but at least I have all of the fun pictures to look at remember. We have about 700 pictures from our trip. I can't narrow it down and I don't want to do 10 different posts. So I am posting about some of my favorite things that we did. If you are dying for more pics about a certain place let me know and I can add more.

These are in no particular order...

1. Snorkeling with the turtles.

We snorkeled on 2 different beaches where we saw turtles. They were so beautiful to see swimming in the water. And no these are not sea turtles in the picture..it is Jeff and Casey, but they are looking at a turtle that you can't see.

2. Captain Cooks Bay

We rented kayaks from some guys that were also willing to sell us some other questionable items. Then we kayaked across the bay for some snorkeling. The snorkeling was great, but it was very difficult to get in and out without getting hurt. Casey and I both ended up bleeding by the end. After snorkeling we walked to the point of the bay and watched the waves crashing and spraying the lava rock shore.

3. Mauna Kea Resort Pool.
We spent our entire last day here reading, talking, napping and playing in the pool. Ahhh

4. Good Friends.

It was fun to travel with Shaunna and Casey Leavitt. Here we are before the Luau. It was not on my favorites list. It was fun and the food was okay. I think it would have been better if we didn't plan it the first day. We had been up for about 20 hours at that point and I was too tired to care about hula dancers and buff guys playing with fire.

5. Scuba Diving and Fishing.

Our scuba trip was so much fun. We did a 2 tank dive and saw some very cool Hawaiian reefs. There were lots of fish and beautiful coral. During our surface time as we were traveling to the next dive site our dive amster and captain were doing some fishing. We hooked into 2 Ono's at the same time. Jeff and I both got a turn reeling in the big fish. It was fun to watch. One of the best parts about it was getting to have some of the fish to take home with us for dinner.

6. Pololu Valley

We drove around the tip of the island to see this beautiful shoreline. We took a hike down to a beautiful black sand beach. Because we were on the rainy side of the island we did get rain spots on a lot of the pictures. It was a fun hike down and a hot hike back up. We enjoyed playing around down on the beach.

7. Golf

Casey and I got in a round of golf while we were there. The course was okay. We didn't feel like dropping a small fortune on one the the nice resort courses so we played this one and had a lot of fun. It had some very pretty holes. We saw peacocks, guinea fowls, turkeys, and wild boars. The boars had torn apart the number 1 tee box and they had started to try and kill them so they didn't destroy the whole course.

8. Helicopter Ride

This may have been one of my favorites, right up there with the dive. I thought it would be really scary, but I loved it. it was so smooth and relaxing. What an awesome way to see Hawaii. It is a must do! We took a ride over the lava flow. This was where the lava met the ocean. It was amazing to see houses that are completely surrounded by lava. Also where people are rebuilding on their properties in the middle of the lava with nothing around them.

9. Getting Lost

After the helicopter ride we decided to go and fine a snorkeling spot that we had seen from the air. It was supposed to be really cool. We got directions from the pilot, the toll booth lady at the airport and our not so trusty GPS. We ended up going way too far and our road was literally ended by a lava flow. So we found this road. It was so hilly and bumpy. We came across this section that was covered in vines. We swang on them for a few minutes. It was amazing to see the lush rainforest as opposed to the desert side of the island where we were staying. We did end up finding the snorkeling spot, which stunk! Oh well it was a fun adventure. You will have to ask Jeff about his little incident in the bushes!