WHAT A VACATION! I was blown away by Hawaii, as soon as we landed the place seemed like an exotic planet compared to Indiana! The water was crystal clear blue, the volcanoes and mountains in the distance were beautiful shades of bright green, and everywhere you looked was covered in bright flowers and etc. We landed on May 18th, and then we spent three days on Oahu. We visited Pearl Harbor on our first day, it was very interesting to see. We visited the USS Arizona Memorial and oil was still rising to the surface of the water from the sunken ship. The ship also still holds all of the soldiers that were trapped inside when the ship sunk. The next day we headed up to the North Shore to visit the beach where LOST is filmed....I was so excited. We also saw Banzaii Pipeline and snorkeled in Turtle Bay which we just kinda stumbled across. The sea turtles here were HUGE and very very friendly they would nudge right up to you. On our last day we hiked up Diamond Head which is a crater left from a dormant volcano, once we were on top (about a two hour hike) we could see the entire island!
We flew over to Maui on the 22nd. The first day we relaxed and settled into our beautiful condo. On the second day, Andrew and I took surf lessons. We were actually pretty good at the beginning boards so the next day we rented some shorter boards to hopefully be able to maneuver the waves better. Well the combination of the new board and "trying" to catch BIGGER waves about drowned us both. I got thrashed around and caught in a set of three really bad waves. My legs were pulled in every direction and I was pretty banged up from swallowing so much water and hitting the coral so much (it was only 4 ft deep). That idea soon turned out to be pretty scary! The next day we had a snorkeling trip planned over to Molokini which is a sunken crater in the middle of the ocean. The water is crystal clear and you can see down perfectly 60-80 ft. We saw all types of fish and even a shark! The next day we got up at 2:30 and drove up to Haleakali Crater, another dormant volcano. We got to the sumit at around 5:00 to watch the sunrise. It was amazing because we were higher than the clouds so when the sun came up the clouds all changed color. We spent the rest of the day on our beach hanging out and then went out to eat in Lahaina which is like a little "Panama Strip." The following day we drove the Hana Highway. This highway was hand-carved around the coast and took 30 years to complete. It had 618 hairpin turns, and 54 one lane bridges. The trip took us 12 hours roundtrip! We stopped and saw black sand beaches, red sand beaches, underwater caves, HUGE waterfalls (several of them), seaside grottos and sea arches. We also were driving directly through the rainforest the entire time, so the foliage around was BEAUTIFUL....but after about 7 hours I got pretty cranky. We had a few days of rest to shop and check out the rest of the island and then on our last day we took a helicopter tour over to Lanai and Molokai ...we saw the tallest sea cliffs in the world (8000 ft!!), some awesome reefs from the air, and the best part was we went over this mountain which opened up into a valley and there was 8 WATERFALLS in the valley. They are called Jurassic Falls and were used in the film Jurassic Park. We also saw another Waterfall that started at the top of the sea cliff and ran all the way down to the ocean......8,000 feet of AMAZING! At night we said farewell to Hawaii from the sea and took a sunset cruise (open bar was nice) and watched the island from the water. The next morning we hung out in Lahaina all day becuase our flight didnt leave until 10 at night. I loved my vacation but was ready to get home. I sure didnt miss Indiana but I missed certain someones and my doggy!
It was an awesome trip to take with my family, and something we may never have gotten to do any other time. Check out my pics cuz we spent over $300 bucks on getting pics developed (we had over 600, dont worry I didnt post them all!). But some of the pics are great!!!