Hawaii (part1)

January 20-30th Owen, Brad, Jana and I all took a trip to Hawaii. For the first 3 days, we stayed at the island of Oahu. Then for the 7 days after that we stayed at the island of Maui. It was such a fun trip/adventure to take with my sister and her husband Brad! We enjoyed their company and can't wait til our next trip together.

While in Hawaii, we ate lots of food, we ate lots of shaved ice, sat on the beach, snorkeled, hiked, shopped, ate some more, and drove around. Here is the rest of our adventure in more detail! (:

This is the North shore on Oahu where the waves were really big. After watching the waves for a little bit, we headed to the "Dole" plantation and had some really yummy soft served pineapple ice cream. YUMMY!!!

This day, on our way to the "Polynesian cultural center", we stopped off at the Temple. It was closed for renovation, but it was still really pretty to see.

This is Owen and I and Jana and Brad and the "PCC" after the luau. The whole day was full of the different Polynesian cultures, including food, dancing and how they live. Jana and I had already been, but Brad and Owen hadn't ever been. It was very interesting! (:

This was at the Pearl Harbor exhibit. We took a ferry out to see the US Arizona and hear all the really sad stories that went along with it.

Brad and Owen showing us how the surf boards are really used! lol They were out taking lessons and these shots were taken as they were headed back into shore at the Waikiki beach.

This is at the island of Maui

This is a blow hole that we hiked to. It was really funny to stand next to it and not know when it was going to blow! While we were there, we enjoyed looking at the sea turtles and crabs.

This lovely morning, we all woke up at 3am to go watch the sunrise at the top of the volcano "Haleakala". It was really pretty and COLD but as you can see... I didn't feel to swift either! Anyway, after the sunrise, we were scheduled to ride bikes down the volcano, but they didn't allow me to ride the bike. Owen, Jana and Brad on the other hand did and I think they enjoyed it. After the bike ride, there was breakfast served at a restaurant at the bottom of the volcano and then we headed back to the condo.

We drove the "Road to Hana". We were told it was really beautiful and we would see lots of waterfalls. It was a Really beautiful drive and we even stopped and ate some really yummy, hot banana bread. We didn't see any of the really big waterfalls (since they were dried up) but we did got to see others and they were really beautiful as well.

We took a 6 hour snorkel/boat ride to the island across the way (sorry, I totally forgot the name of it). It was fun, since we got to see a huge pod of "spinner dolphins", a few "spotted dolphins" and a whole bunch of WHALES. They were everywhere. We heard them when we even went snorkeling. The boat people said that there is so many whales right now that they call it "whale soup"! We watched them from shore and everything. On the last day in Hawaii, Jana, Brad and Owen were all snorkeling off the shore and a huge whale swam right in front of them! They didn't even see it (since the water was murky from the storm the night before) but they said they could hear it like crazy. I was jealous that I didn't go out that time! ):

Anyway, The only time I actually threw up on the trip was on this boat ride. It was way to long and choppy for me!

This is the "swinging bridges" hike we went on. It was really pretty. We were surrounded by rain forest and we could see water falls all around us, but we couldn't get to close to them since there was a flash flood warning for that afternoon.