Our Hawaiian Adventure: Relaxation Day

After such a full day on the West shore on Sunday, we decided to take it easy on Monday and hang out at the beach near our house, Brennecke's Beach. JP and I have different travel styles. I love to be on the go every second (maybe I get this from my frequent Disney World trips as a child?) while JP loves to relax and just sit on the beach and read. The good thing about Kauai is there is ample opportunity for both of these activities. When planning our trip I tried always follow a high activity day with a low key day.

We spent the morning in our rental with JP making us what was our standard breakfast in Kauai- scrambled eggs with toast for me and spam for him. After spending some time reading the news- ok I was reading guidebooks while JP read the news- we made our way to Brennecke's beach. It was so nice to have access to the beach chairs provided by our rental.

We spent most of our time right here at Brennecke Beach, which is a small beach known for it's great waves for body surfing.

 

However, I did take some time to walk around the neighboring Poipu Beach. These beaches were different than any I've been to before. Instead of one long straight beach, it was little coves of beaches with a great grassy area meeting the sand.

 

 

 

 

We spent a ton of time in the water and, of course, JP spent a lot of time riding these great waves.

After a morning of relaxing on the beach with some wave riding action, we headed in for lunch. On our way to lunch we made a quick stop at the farmer's market. Trying local Hawaiian fruit was something I was very excited about. The mango was called an ice cream mango because it had very little starch (per the lady that sold it to us) and it was probably the best mango I've ever had. It was so good that after JP cut it, I ate the whole thing without sharing. (In my defense I didn't realize that the bowl he gave me was the whole thing). We got lychees, avocado, passion fruit and a few other things that I had never seen before and don't remember the names of. I would definitely recommend this if you are a fruit lover in Hawaii!

 

We originally planned to go to a hamburger place in Koloa- a town just a few miles from Poipu- but upon our arrival we discovered it was closed on Mondays. No worries, I remembered from my research that there was a great fish market in the same area. So, we headed to Koloa Fish Market where we got lunch plates to-go and some marlin for JP to cook for dinner.

 Our afternoon was a relaxing repeat of the morning. Such beautiful a atmostphere!

 

 As it started to get dark we headed in to our rental and JP prepared the marlin for us. He did a great job at cooking. I did not do such a great job of taking a picture of his prepared dish.

Remember Five Years Ago Today...

 Five years ago today we were hanging out here at Samford's Reid Chapel.

 A lot of work and planning went into these programs and the reception to follow.

Whenever I think about our wedding, I am overwhelmed by the love shown to both JP and I by so many people. Every wedding gift represents someone who cared enough about us to spend their money on something for us. I think about this every time I put our dishes away! Although so many people showed love for us, I would say that my parents are at the top of the list! They put so much time, effort, and money into our wedding celebration. They worked so hard to make it what I wanted.

When I think of our wedding, I am also reminded of our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. JP's parents put a lot of thought into this event. It was a special night that further reinforced how blessed JP and I are by the people in our lives.

Our wedding was the first wedding I was actually a part of. Since I have now had the experience of being a bridesmaid, I have even more gratefulness for our sweet friends that took the time and money to be a part of our wedding. We each had five members of the wedding party. Each of these people are very special to us and are friends we will always have, even if we are unable to see each other frequently.

 

And yes, I do think of JP when I think of our wedding. I have been blessed to spend the past five years as his wife. I have been able to experience many of his beneficial qualities over these years. In honor of five years, five of my favorite JP qualities are
1) The fact that he does not care what others think (at times this can be my least favorite quality too).
 2) He likes to figure things out and do things himself. I did not really see this quality come to light until we purchased our house. He is also like this with our cars. Some may think it is because he doesn't want to spend money. Although that is part of it, he truly enjoys challenging himself with learning knew things.
3). Commitment to health. JP realizes the importance of exercise. Although he had to take a break from running, he joined the Y (which was something he really did not want to spend the money on) so he could swim. He continually throughout our marriage has encouraged me to be active as well. I'm not sure I would be as active as I am without his encouragement.
4). JP has the ability to make me laugh and to make me feel like a kid again.
5).  He is slow to anger. I am not.

And yes, five years later these are still my favorite flower.

 And, I will end with my wedding cake. It was exactly how I always imagined it would look.

Our Hawaiian Adventure: The West Shore

I enjoyed all of our days in Kauai, but if I had to pick a favorite I think this would be my favorite day.

We left Poipu pretty early to head to the West Shore which was about an hour away. Once on the West Shore, we headed to Waimea Canyon with the plans to do a hike. We have both been to the Grand Canyon so decided not to hike in the canyon but to instead hike on one of the trails that leads to a water lookout.

We ended up at the Awa'Awapuhi which is about 6 miles round trip. Thanks to one of the guidebooks that was in our room (another plus to our rental- there were tons of different guidebooks available) we had no trouble finding the trail.

We set out this hike which was somewhat like the Grand Canyon in that the hike out was downhill, but the way back up was up hill. We were expecting this to be a pretty easy hike for us, and it was... until about one mile into it.

JP has an ankle injury that keeps bothering him. He tweaked it before the trip while mowing the lawn. After just a mile of hiking, his ankle was preventing him from hiking well. He was limping and I was in the lead which rarely happens. He did not want to turn around though. Thankfully we ran into some Hawaiian natives that were placing walking sticks along the trail. JP picked one up and it became very helpful to him.

We continued the hike which had a few sneak peeks of the sights to come at the end.

Once we reached the end it was such a beautiful view. Of all the hikes I have done, this has been the best end view.

After we finally made it back to car (it took us about 3 1/2 hours), we headed back down the canyon. We did stop at an overlook to see the canyon.

Our zipline tour guide had recommend Ishihara Market to us when JP had asked for the place to get poke (raw fish). We decided to check it out for lunch.

We got four types of poke. I'm not a huge fan of poke but had some plus some fruit. Afterwards we headed to JoJo's Shave Ice (I learned it is shave ice, not shaved ice). I got the lychee flavor. JP got one of their specialty ices. Either he did not read the description well or they gave him the wrong one, but his had beans in it which made us laugh. They looked like kidney beans, but I did some research and they are azuki beans.

At that point it was time for us to head towards our boat tour of the Na Pali coast. I did a ton of research on which boat tour to take and finally decided on using Kauai Explorer. At first all I kind find were companies that used either a large catamaran or a small raft like boat (inflatable zodiac). The large catamaran was too big to go into sea caves, which is something I really wanted to do. But, the small raft boats, although they could go into sea caves, looked really uncomfortable as you had to hold on to a rope the entire time.

Finally I came across Na Pali Experience which uses mid-size catamarans that are small enough to go into caves but large enough for comfort. Plus, they only take 6 people on the boats so it feels like a personal tour.

We were incredibly pleased with Na Pali Experience and even more pleased with the beauty of the Na Pali coast. This is on several lists of must sees throughout the world. It truly is awe inspiring and causes you to want to do nothing but praise our mighty, creative God!

 

 

My absolute favorite part of the tour was going exploring sea caves. Our tour went farther down the coast of any of the other tours- we saw many turning around- and we got to go in two caves that no other tours visit.

 

We ended the boat tour right at sunset and headed back to our rental. We were both pretty tired and ate our leftover from Casa di Amici from Friday night.

Our Hawaiian Adventure: Ziplining

When we decided to go to Hawaii, I knew one of the things I wanted to do was zipline. On Saturday August 17 at 7:15am we arrived at Outfitters Kauai which was about 5 minutes from our rental. Because of the 5 hour time change arriving at 7:15am was no problem at all. We felt like it was 12:15pm which is actually why I scheduled this early day early on in our trip.

This five hour tour took place about 15 minutes from the Outfitters Kauai office at Kipu Ranch. This is a private ranch that allows a few companies to do zipline, ATV tours etc. on their property. It is a gorgeous property  and -as you will hear all over Kauai- parts of Jurassic Park were filmed here.

There were nine different ziplines with five of them being tandem. Two of the lines allowed you to go upside down. The first three lines were down in the jungle while the last six were atop the jungle. I did not get very many pictures as the camera I was using was not very zipline friendly. Several of the people in our tour group had GoPro cameras which were perfect for the occasion. I do not have any pictures of us zipping over the jungle but it was pretty amazing.

 Note: Did you notice JP's terrible mustache? He had grown out a beard and has a tendency to shave off parts at a time instead of shaving it all off at one time. He came to Kauai with this mustache. We had a deal that he had to shave it off at the half way point of the trip.

The tour included a backpack. The top part of the backpack was used to place our personal items. The bottom part was a cooler that included a turkey wrap, pasta salad, cookie, water and Hawaiian juice for each person.

Along the trail between zips our guide pointed out this blue flowers stating that they are edible. You better believe JP, who once ate a poisonous bean at the desert botanical garden in Arizona, ate these flowers which apparently tasted like mushrooms. We also found lemon guava along the way which were really good. Thankfully our guide warned us that the things that looked like cherry tomatoes were not tomatoes but something highly poisonous.
 

We had a great time ziplining! The last line was 1800 feet long and one of our favorites. I will say that although I am somewhat afraid of heights- which I discovered at the Grand Canyon- I felt completely save doing this and had no fear at all.

After completing the nine ziplines, we walked down to a natural pool where we swam and zipped into the water for about 30 minutes.

After our zipline tour we went back to our rental and relaxed on the lanai for a few hours. We then headed down to Brennecke's Beach for the rest of the afternoon.

After spending time on the beach we headed to dinner at the Savage Shrimp. This ended up being one of the worst restaurant experiences we have ever had. It was so weird and random that it made us laugh. These are the three main reasons for our feelings of dislike

1. We had to wait ~30 minutes to receive our food which seemed to be a long time for this type of restaurant. When we walked into the restaurant, it was empty so there was no one with an order ahead of us. We also did not like how you placed your order at the counter and did not initially pay but had to go back up to the counter and wait in line after you had eaten to actually pay.
   
2. If the food had been good, the wait would not have been that big of a deal. However, the fish tacos were the worst fish tacos my husband and I have ever had. The fish was incredibly tough and we coined it "fish jerky." We could not finish it. We also got one of the shrimp plates that included peeled shrimp. It was ok but not anything spectacular.
   
3. The thing that put us over the top was the cat. The doors were open to the restaurant and the cat kept going in and out. If the cat had just stayed in the dining section it would have been bad but not terrible. The cat, however, slipped under the partition between the dining section and the kitchen several times. So, at times, there was a cat in the kitchen. 

After our not so good dinner, we decided to go to the grocery store and buy ice cream and take it back to our rental to eat. We went to bed pretty early that night as we were still not completely adjusted to the time change.

Our Hawaiian Adventure: A Place to Sleep

Planning a trip to Hawaii is full of decisions. The first decision is simply which island to visit. I initially leaned towards Maui but the more research I did I decided to choose Kauai as it is the least commercialized island.

Once I decided on Kauai I then had to decide which side of the island to stay. I narrowed it down between the North and the South shores and even considered splitting our stay between the two. I ultimately decided on the South shore in Poipu.

I searched and searched VRBO for a place to stay. I really enjoy doing research and although I found a lot of great places nothing screamed "this is it" to me.  Finally, I decided to go about my research a little differently and stumbled upon this Brennecke's Beach Bungalow. As I read the description, I just got a feeling that this was the right place for us. It was less than a minute walk from the beach, had a ton of great reviews, and was a great price at $150/night. And a huge plus was the beach it was less than a minute from was Brennecke's Beach, one of the best beaches for body surfing which JP loves to do. The Bungalow is attached to a ladies house which made me a little hesitant to book but all the reviews were so great that I quickly got over my hesitation.

The good feelings I got about the Bungalow turned out to be right. We absolutely loved this little place.

Here is the entire house. The Bungalow is located on the left of the main house. We were in the bottom story and had a wonderful lanai to sit outside and enjoy the perfect weather. There was a couple that stayed on the top floor but we never saw them. We did see the couple that live in the main house a few times when we were coming in or out and they were on their lanai. It was nice to hear their suggestions of things to do since they are locals!

It was one large room with a bathroom. The bedroom area was carpeted and the kitchen area was hardwood.The Bungalow was stocked with everything we could possibly need including Hawaiian granola, pineapple, and juice. The kitchen had everything except a stove but there was a toaster oven and griddle that were perfect substitutes. Not only was the Bungalow stocked but we had access to a shed that was full of beach chairs and umbrellas, boogie boards, and snorkeling gear. It saved us from having to rent snorkeling gear. Overall it was evident that the owner of the Bungalow really paid attention to details.

One of my favorite things about the Bungalow was having the windows open at all times. Many of the places available for rent in Poipu do not have air conditioning because the trade winds are pretty much always present. JP gets hot really easily so I was somewhat concerned but it ended up being perfect. There was a ceiling fan and that combined with open windows with trade winds resulted in the perfect temperature.  Plus having the windows open means you get to hear the ocean really well!

Here is the wonderful view from our lanai. The beach is where you see the palm trees.







 These flowers were blooming right in front of the Bungalow.