Hanakapi'ai Falls Hike

Do I even need to explain on this picture???
We had stopped to get subway on the way up to the pali coast when we found Ariel here...

Here we are about 15 minutes into the hike (yes I'm already sweaty and exhausted). You can see the reef in the background which is pretty cool. At this point we were like jogging up the mountain just excited to see more of the lookout spots!

This was probably 30 minutes or so in. We were kinda upset because we had been told it was going to be a pretty hike....freaking ugly.

Here we are with our good friends Lauren and Steven Tracy. Me and Alex planned our trip around our 6th month anniversary and Valentines day. A couple days after we bought our plane tickets we were talking to Steve and he told us that he bought tickets to Kauai to surprise Lauren for their 1 year anniversary and valentines day. We asked what days they were going and it ended up we were going to be there the exact same days staying in hotels that were next to each other! Haha so we saw the sights together and it ended up being such a blast. We're so glad they spent their one year with us!!!! :)

Yes those are tally marks of deaths in the place that we hiked to....yikes

This beautiful stream goes straight out into the ocean, its hard to see in this picture but the ocean is right behind my head. It was AMAZING and FREEEEEZING!!!! haha Alex was bummed that we had not brought fly fishing poles.

This was the half way point in the hike. We stopped, had some food, and just watched the amazing waves crash into the cliffs. This was one of the ones we got on camera but it doesn't do any justice to the size of the waves we saw. They were the biggest waves I've ever seen in my life by far. Plus it was super windy so as the waves crashed the wind would like spin the top of the waves into a swirl that looked like a mini tornado! Check out the video below to see sorta what I'm talking about.

My little explorer in his bamboo forest.

FINALLY THERE! When we came around the curve and saw this we all about cried. It was honestly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life (besides the mullet my husband is now sporting). 200 ft of beautiful clear fresh water cascading down the cliff into a perfect little pool to swim in. We swam back behind the waterfall and sat on a little step looking out through the water, Alex said how we all felt, "we went swimming in the celestial kingdom."

My husband IS Kocoum (from Pocahontas).
Us right after seeing the falls for the first time.

So, we passed a lot of people on our hike, and all the women we saw were in like full make up white shirts and some were even in nice khakis, and they were all clean as can be! We couldn't figure it out because we were all COVERED from head to toe in mud and grossness by the end of the hike. Me and Lauren decided it was because unlike the other girls on the trail who were following their husbands, we were "women on a mission" and were leading the way for our husbands during a lot of the hike. Needless to say we were pretty much the coolest girls on the trail!

Immediately following this shower seen above we ran to the car (still covered in plenty of mud) and Steve drove like a bat outta hell to the airport where we arrived at 8:00 pm. Our flight was set to take off at 8:15 pm. And....drum roll please...
WE MADE OUR FLIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We would like to thank Steve for his race car driver skills, Hawaii for the laid back attitude that allows for people to only arrive 15 minutes early and still make their flight, and Alex would like to thank his wife for being willing to cut in lines and fight his battles to get them on the flight on time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Saturdays in Hawaii

So Saturdays have turned into our adventure days. Its been so fun to explore the island and see all the amazing stuff you can find when you take a minute to look (especially on an island :)This last Saturday we headed up north shore to see what we could find. We got to sharks cove and it looked so beautiful but the waves in the cove part were way to big to snorkel SO we decided to explore the tide pool area instead. I was so excited because when I lived in California we used to go explore tide pools ALL the time! As you can see above it really just looks like shallow water with a bunch of random rocks spread all over, but we found the coolest stuff!

Heres Alex right as the exploring began.

This is the sweetest picture EVER! We were walking through the tide pools and there was a little underwater tornado thingy (not sure what they're called??) The water is too shallow to snorkel, so in order to get a picture I just took the camera, stuck it under the water and snapped some pictures. This first one is awesome because I caught the little funnel, plus the state fish of hawaii (the yellow fish on the left) PLUS there is a whole school of silver fish in the very background if you look close! It turned out awesome, its so cool to see what different things look like from an underwater view!

The very start of the funnel

So we climbed up these rocks to check out the ocean on the other side and discovered a bunch more unexplored little tide pools. This one was so cool, there were all sorts of different colored corals with poka dots and strips and all sorts of things! This video is a product of just discovering that our underwater camera takes videos and the fact that pictures didn't do it any justice! (sorry if it makes you dizzy, still gettin the hang of the video thing :)