HAWAII

I'm sure everyone has been in suspense since I've last posted. We now have the internet again and I can catch up on everything that has happened in the last month.

HAWAII, ahhhh, it was such a fabulous vacation and it was perfect timing. We were able to get away from our stress and lounge in what I refer to as "eternal summer." We were gone for about 9 days right at the beginning of May. It seems crazy that we've already been back over a month. I'm also so glad that we went with Steph and Ethan, we couldn't have found better travel buddies and I loved spending time with Steph since it's so few and far between that we see each other. We stayed with Ethan's WONDERFUL family and are glad for the new friends we've made with them. We combined all our photos and ended up with nearly 1400!! The pictures are a little out of order on a few days but it's all the same, so here's a sample...

Here we are all ready to fly out of Portland. Luckily we didn't have anyone else sitting on our row and could spread out a little.
When we got to Honolulu our wonderful hosts Kristine and Chris were there to greet us with beautiful lei's. We drove home in 2 separate cars so we could fit all our luggage. The girls got to ride in the yellow mustang convertible :)
After a good night's rest we went into Waikiki for the May Day festival. Here I am making my own lei for my wrist.
We enjoyed the festivities at the park and then walked over to the beach and took a little dip. Here's Cameron & I with Honolulu in the background. The rest of the afternoon we spent looking around.
Day two we were all over the place. Thinking back I can't believe how much we squished in. This first picture is at Hilo Hattie's. This is our Tiki impression.
Then we went and saw Pearl Harbor.

We went inland and visited the Dole Plantation.
We rode the Pineapple Express.
And ate Dole Whip, the yummiest dessert. It's two of my favorite things combined, pineapple and soft serve ice cream coming together for a wonderful deliciousness.
After a yummy dinner we stopped at a beach and saw some sea turtles. I thought this was really cool that we ended up there at just the right time...they don't hang out on the beach all the time.
The next morning we decided to take a bike ride, here we are all ready to go. As some of you know I love to go on casual bike rides and this was just perfect. We stopped at a few beaches and got some great pictures along the way.
We decided to hop in for a minute here because the water was spectacularly blue. The picture doesn't even do justice, it looked like it was straight out of a calendar photo.
After the bike ride we got cleaned up and went to the Polynesian Cultural Center. This is us at our luau.
Here's the fire dancers at "Ha: Breath of Life" that we went to after the Luau.
Here's our cool tattoo's. Cameron's was a warrior and mine was a princess.
Here's the beautiful Hawaii Temple.
First thing the next morning we hiked up Diamond Head. Here's picture from the top of the volcano/mountain.

And here I am goofing around up at the top. It was kind of a funny hike, with some tunnels with windy stairs and weird cement at different places that you are almost crawling through.
My favorite thing that we did in Hawaii was... Surfing. Here I am holding my pose as I ride the wave in.
This is Cameron paddling into shore after we were done.
Here's the both of us paddling out at the beginning.
And here's our beach lesson.
I was the only one in the group that had a blue top, which has come in handy looking back at pictures because I can quickly tell if it was me or not.
This guy on one of the corners had these parrots and they were absolutely hilarious so we had to get a picture.
This is my best fish face at the International Market Place.
You can't tell completely from the photo, but this tree was huge, and we are probably 5 feet off the ground (I had to get a boost to get up there).

This picture is from Nu'uanu Pali, it's a beautiful overlook of the windward side of the island.
You can get more of the view from this picture.
Day number...ah, well anyway the next day we went to the Byo-do In temple. There were some bamboo gardens that were really cool on the grounds.

Here we all are looking at the temple and the water.
This cool picture we took in a gazebo near the temple.
This is right after Cameron almost made a bunch of bamboo fall on my head, it's a good thing I didn't get hit. :)
This is Cameron's huge tuna sandwich. We all had huge sandwiches/burgers for lunch.
And followed up our lunch with famous Matsumoto Shave Ice that had ice cream at the bottom, yum!
On our way home we stopped at jumping rock to get in the water and of course, JUMP. Here I go!
We went snorkeling a few times, once at Turtle Bay resort and once at Shark's Cove. Here's some cool underwater pictures.
I was the first one to spot the turtle, it was so exciting for all of us and it was so awesome to swim around with it!!
This is our second to last day. After snorkeling we had Calvin (a local friend of Cameron's) take us around the island. Here we were looking at a location where part of "Lost" was filmed (I was also being eaten alive by mosquitos so we didn't hang around for too long).
This is a picture from a view point that Calvin took us to.
This is the waterfall that was on "Lost"
In the afternoon we hung out at a Waikiki beach and did a little kayaking (you can see Diamond Head in the background here).
We ate A LOT of plate lunches in Hawaii. By the end of our trip we opted for burgers rather than a plate lunch.
Watching the sunset and getting ready for the fireworks!
A night view of Honolulu from Tantalus.
Our last morning we went back and ate at one of our favorite restaurants again, it was called the Hukilau Cafe. On our way home we stopped to get a picture by this pig that was roasting in someone's front yard.
Then we went and took some fun pictures by Chinaman's Hat.


As we were leaving we threw our lei's into the ocean to show that we would be back someday!Our last meal was at the Like Like Drive Thru. We were sad to leave Hawaii, but we had a fabulous time.
We got into Portland early in the morning and stopped at the world famous Voodoo Donuts (thanks for making us go Steph)!
This sign on the wall across from Voodoo Donuts couldn't have said it better about the part of town that we were in...

Aloha

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Wowza! Looks like you guys had a great vaca~ glad to see life is treating you so well! :)

Alicia said...

Keep Portland Weird. That's funny. I'm so glad you guys had fun! What neat pictures! That looks like an awesome trip and you guys deserve it. Give me an update on your house.

Heather C Taylor said...

So much fun! I love the pic of you jumping into the Ocean!