Never in My Wildest Dreams!

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine a place could be so beautiful. I've heard many people compare Kauai to the Garden of Eden. Obviously, I've never seen the Garden of Eden. But, if it were even half as beautiful as Kauai... it would not disappoint!

This is a warning and disclaimer to the outside reader. There are so many things that I don't want to ever forget about this trip. So, since this is "my blog", I'm not going to worry so much about boring the outside reader. Skim through what you want. But, it will be a travel log, and it will be LONG :)

As a little background, several years ago Baylen's parents decided to share their travel miles and Marriott points (from all of Boyd's traveling) with their kids. They told each couple that they would take us on a vacation of our choice. They started with the oldest, Tavi, and as soon as they had enough miles for the next trip, the next sibling in line got their turn. We were way excited but it seemed like an eternity away before we would get our turn. Well, Tavi and Breven had their turn. But, when it was time for Banyan to go, it wasn't a good time for him. So, it was down to us (a definite perk to being the oldest twin)! Baylen and I spent hours and hours stewing over where to go. How do you choose when you have the option of ANYWHERE?! We really came close to deciding on Europe. But, in the end we thought we'd rather spend a little longer than one week there. We had the option of getting a suite in Aruba. But we researched it and thought we'd rather go somewhere more lush and tropical. Several of our neighbors had been to Kauai lately and they all LOVED IT. So, we started looking into that. We had our struggles trying to figure out how to make it work. But, we finally got it all figured out and booked for November 2010.

Preparing to leave your family for a whole week is no easy task, so I was very relieved when we finally got to the airport. I can't tell you how surreal it seemed when we walked up to our terminal and saw this on the screen...


I was actually flying to Hawaii!

Our trip over was an adventure, to say the least! When we had just got to the pacific ocean (we passed the Golden Gate Bridge) the captain came over the speaker and informed us that we needed to land the plane. One of our hydraulics had gone out and we were being diverted to LAX. They insisted that it wasn't an emergency. But, I think most of us had a little tinge of anxiety. While at LAX airport, we were not allowed to leave the plane. We sat on the tarmac for 2 1/2 hours while waiting for them to get everything fixed. We had an awesome flight attendant who happened to be a magician on the side. He entertained us with some amazing tricks. However, we definitely spent a lot of the time worrying about how we were going to catch our connecting flight from Oahu to Kauai. We called the inter-island airline and found out that they only flew to Kauai once a day. So, if we missed our flight, we would be stuck in Oahu, without any accommodations, for 24 hours.

When we finally got to Oahu, we had 20 minutes before our next flight left. Baylen took off running to collect our luggage, and we took off running to our plane. The Oahu airport is not the best place to be when you are running late and trying to figure out where your plane is. We ended up having to take a shuttle and then go through what seemed like a huge maze. When we got to the plane, everyone else was already loaded and waiting for us. However, we couldn't get ahold of Baylen. The people there were really nice and waited as long as they could. Just when they told us they couldn't wait any longer, Baylen found us. Major relief!!! When Baylen finally got on the plane, all of the passengers clapped. It was stressful at the time. But, thinking back on it now, I can't help but laugh.

It was pitch dark by the time we got to Kauai. So, we didn't really get a feel for the island until we woke up the next morning. However, the humidity and warm air were wonderful (although I'm not going to lie when I say I did feel a bit clausterphobic with the thick air)!!!

I cannot say enough about how amazing our resort was. It was definitely a place that I would classify for the rich and famous. I felt a little out of place. When we drove up, I felt like we were driving through the gates of a palace. There were tiki torches lit everywhere, and huge trees, beautiful pillars, ponds and streams. There were times I found myself holding my breath as I took it all in.
Here is the view from our balcony....
We were pool view/ ocean view. The big pool had several hot tubs surrounding it (under each of the pillar things). There was a kids pool with a water slide and our own private beach. Here's our view of the ocean...
The beds at the resort were like sleeping on a cloud. I don't remember the last time I slept so soundly. (Well, except for the three AM wake up call from the rooster outside our window). There are roosters EVERYWHERE on Kauai.

I loved traveling to a western time zone because we were up and ready to go by 6 or 7 every morning without it feeling early to us!

Our luggage didn't make it over to Kauai with us. Luckily, we had a change of clothes in our carry on. But, I didn't have any makeup or toiletries. I was so nervous that we would spend the whole week without our luggage showing up. I will definitely pack my carry on a little differently from now on!

That morning we went to tour the Hindu Montesary. We got there really early, so we drove around taking in the beauty for a while.
The Montesary was awesome! The grounds were beyond beautiful and the tour was really interesting. It was really neat learning about how the Hindu monks live.

The temple was amazing. They carve each stone by hand. It takes 7 years to carve one stone. It made me think a lot about all the work the pioneers did on the Salt Lake Temple.
This creature has a ball in the middle of the mouth. The ball was carved through the teeth. I still cannot fathom how on earth that was done.
After the tour we found an awesome little restaurant called Mark's Place that served amazing local food. My mouth waters just thinking about it. Then we hit up the local Walmart and quickly realized that Kauai has some pretty awesome candy. We probably spent an hour in the candy aisle on a little shopping spree. The cool thing was, their candy is so cheap that we totally justified getting a ton. I never thought I could have so much fun at Walmart :)

On Wednesday we also drove out and walked around the Lihue lighthouse. There wasn't anyone out there to let us in but it was fun just to walk around.

As we were leaving, we ran across a few of these beautiful birds in the parking lot.Wild peacocks. Have I mentioned how amazing Kauai is?!

That night we walked along our private beach and spent a little time relaxing out there. Our internal clocks were still out of wack. I felt like I was 80 years old when I started getting incredibly (can't keep my eyes open) tired at 9:00 at night. So, we hit the sack kind of early.

Thursday was forecasted to be overcast, cool and rainy all day. So, we tried to plan things that we could do in the rain. We started our day with a trip to see Wailua Falls. It was beautiful.

I think it was really the only stop that I felt was super touristy. My favorite was the men weaving and selling hats right under this sign... (no vending)

We got some delicious Kalua pig for lunch at the Lihue BBQ inn and then headed to the Grove Farm Plantation for a tour. It was pretty interesting. However, I think they could have covered the information they did in half the time. There were some beautiful flowers that I was able to snap pictures of...
and the things they grew there were fascinating. This is an avacado. An avacado on steroids :) I've never seen one even a tenth the size of this.

Later that afternoon we headed down to Poipu on the south end of the island. We had to drive through the famous tree tunnel.
We stopped at spouting horn...

and then went to see some hula dancers perform

Terry bought me a beautiful lei there. I loved it. I can't even describe how beautiful it was and how incredible it smelt.

Afterwards, we went to the famous Brick Oven Pizza. They had a dessert pizza there that was incredible. Who would think to top a pizza with carmel, chocolate chips and a sweet cream cheese glaze. Someday I'm going to figure out the recipe!

That night we got back to our hotel in time to sit in the hot tub for a while. Baylen and I also swam in the pool. Seriously the most incredible pool I have EVER seen!

On Friday Boyd, Baylen and I got up early for our Secret Falls excursion. Our trip started by kayaking the Wailua River.

I had never been in a kayak before and was a little worried. But, it was a lot easier than I imagined. I think there were only a few times that Baylen got totally frustrated with my paddling (although he was a good sport about it). After our two mile paddle down the river, we docked our kayaks and started the hiking portion of the trip.
We hiked a little over a mile through some beautiful forests. Our tour guide, Rick, had some amazing facts that he would ramble off to us as we walked. It seriously was fascinating... and my favorite part of the experience. I wished that I had taken something to record everything he said.

Here are two crazy cool things we learned during our hike. This is a picture of a walking tree. The roots are outside of the ground and the tree actually "walks" to where there is water. It's not fast enough to see, but still awesome!

This is a 24 hour flower. These flowers bloom, change color, and then fall to the ground in a 24 hour period of time. They are all over the ground in Kauai. They are so pretty that they almost look like they are growing from the ground.
Another plant that fascinated me was the shy plant. I didn't get a picture of it but if you touched the leaf, it would shrivel up like it was being shy. It was amazing.

We ended up at the beautiful Secret Falls. We were able to swim in the pool right below the falls. Baylen and I also went and stood under them. It was cold!
On the hike back we stopped at a rope swing. Baylen tried it out and loved it. I still regret not giving it a try.
After the kayaking trip, we went back to the hotel to get Terry and then headed for the farmers market. Kauai has some pretty amazing, delicious fruit.

By this point in time, Baylen was dying to hit the beach. We had been there two whole days and hadn't gotten in the ocean yet. We went to Lydgate Park which is an amazing place to snorkel. There are two huge areas that are totally surrounded by big boulders. It is shallow enough that you can walk through the whole thing. But, there are TONS OF FISH!!! We were heading to a show later that night and Terry and I didn't think we had time to shower and get ready again. So, just Boyd and Baylen got in the water and we enjoyed time together relaxing on the beach.
That night we went to the Smith Tropical Paradise Luau Show. It was really good. They even had an erupting volcano as part of the show.
On Saturday we did a little exploring. We had heard, from one of our neighbors, that there is a secret cove that you can swim with dolphins. All beaches in Hawaii are public. The only problem with this cove is that you have to cross through a lot of private land to get to the public beach. However, Baylen really wanted to go check it out. Boyd and Terry were really good sports because it was kind of a rough little hike. We also had to hop a little wall and squeeze through a fence that says no trespassing to get to the cove. I was a little nervous that we were going to get caught. The cove was really pretty but Baylen decided not to swim out to find the dolphins. I don't think any of us were able to shake off the "we're going to get caught" feeling so we didn't stay long.

We decided to do something a little less illegal next :). We went to Poipu Beach to do a little snorkeling. It was a more crowded beach (like you see in California) but it had some awesome snorkeling. I couldn't believe how many fish there were!
That afternoon we docked a catemaran for a sunset dinner cruise of the Napali Coast. Before leaving for Kauai, we knew we wanted to see the Napali Coast but couldn't decide if we should do it on a helicopter or boat. We decided to do the boat because it was half the price and was five hours instead of one. I'm soooo glad we made this choice. It was amazing- definitely the highlight of the trip for me! The skipper and his crew were so good to us. They were always walking around asking if they could take our pictures or seeing if we needed anything.
There were drinks, appetizers, a delicious dinner and dessert. The Napali Coast was beautiful. The pictures definitely don't do it justice. We saw a goat perched on a cliff, some amazing caves and the world's second tallest waterfall. We also saw several places where Hollywood has filmed movies.
I saw one dolphin but it went by so fast that Baylen was never able to see it. I was a little sad as we headed back and hadn't really seen a lot of sea life. I really wanted Baylen to be able to see a dolphin. When we were about halfway back to port, David (our crew member) spotted a pod of spinner dolphins in the distance. The dolphins spotted us too, and came over to play with us. They swam around our boat for at least 25 minutes. It was amazing. I was so close to them that I could have touched them. They would jump and spin and do all sorts of amazing things to entertain us. You would have thought that they had been trained at Sea World. However, these dolphins cannot live in captivity. They will die within hours of being captured.
Most of us missed the majority of the sunset because the dolphins were so incredible. Seriously a once in a lifetime moment. The tail end that we saw of the sunset was beautiful and before we knew it we were back at the port.
Sunday was our west coast day. We drove over to Waimea Canyon which is called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. There were lots of beautiful lookout and photo moments!

We spent that night reading on the beach.

The sunset was so beautiful that I had fun with the camera, too.

Monday we drove up the North Shore. That drive definitely won the prize for the most spectacularly beautiful scenery I have ever seen. Terry's camera was clicking nonstop and I'm sure everyone got tired of me exclaiming how beautiful everything was. Sooooo green and amazing! We tried stopping at Tunnels Beach to snorkel but it was closed down due to the intense swells. So we drove on to Ke'e Beach. This was my favorite beach.
As we snorkeled, you could look to the side and see these huge magnificent cliffs that were covered in lush green. I think I had my head out of the water taking in the scenery just as much as I had it under the water checking out the fish.

We stopped at several other places on the north shore. I think I could have spent the entire week just up there and been in heaven!


This is at the Secret Lava Pools. My memories of this place include mosquitoes, mosquitoes, mosquitoes!
That night we did a little more snorkeling at Lydgate, souvenier shopping at Walmart and than packed our suitcases.

Tuesday morning was spent lounging around the resort. We had smoothies on the beach and than did a little exploring.
During the whole trip I kept trying to find a place to get fresh pineapple. Lots of fruit markets sold it. The only problem was that we didn't have a knife to cut it. Right before checkout I was surprised with a knock at our hotel room door. Boyd ordered me a plate of pineapple. It was sooooo ono!
It was sure hard leaving Kauai. However, it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been because we got to spend the rest of the day touring around Oahu. Here is the inter-island plane we took to Oahu...
We rented a car and drove around the island. Oahu is very pretty but VERY BUSY! A big change from being in peaceful Kauai! Our first stop was the temple. The temple grounds were absolutely incredible!
We stopped at the North Shore just in time for the sunset. It was one of the prettiest sunsets I've ever seen. What an amazing way to end an amazing trip!


This trip was absolutely something that I will remember forever. It was so fun to spend one on one time with Boyd and Terry. We did a lot of driving in the car and while we did, we would ask them all sorts of questions about their childhood and early years of marriage. There was so much they told us that not even Baylen had heard before. I am so blessed to have the in laws that I do and am grateful for the opportunity I had to get to know them better in a place that I consider paradise. Terry has had lots of painful medical procedures done with her cancer since we've been back. She said that whenever the doctors tell her to go to her happy place, she goes in her mind to Kauai. I think that Kauai is definitely one of my happy places... a place that I hope I get the opportunity to visit again someday!

One final, very grateful, note... I just have to say that this trip never would have happened if it hadn't been for my mom. While we were snorkeling, cruising, kayaking, eating, and relaxing, she was making dinner, running kids around, helping with homework, breaking up arguments, and giving my kids an amazing week that they will never forget. Thanks, mom!