Kauai Part II

We woke up early on New Year's Day and set out to go hiking at Waimea Canyon. I LOVED ziplining, I thought tubing was fun, laying out by the pool and beach is my ALL TIME favorite thing to do... but I "think" this might have been the most fun I had on our trip.

It was over a 30 minute drive to the canyon so we put the top down, enjoyed the view, and got a little silly...

There were several lookout spots on the way up the canyon so we stopped several times and took pictures of the gorgeous views...

I did say we were a little silly... Russ caught me trying to stand up on a guard rail - didn't happen, it was really wobbly. - Boo

As we drove up the canyon the temperature continued to drop. It was 70s at the bottom of the canyon and into the 50s at the top. One lookout that we stopped at was 3400 feet elevation and that wasn't even the top.

More pretty views...

One of the many other Hawaiian islands. This one has one of the largest Hawaiian native populations (200ish) and is closed to tourists. (I read the sign... but I don't remember what it's called). It's owned by the Robinson family, who seems to own a good portion of the Hawaiian islands.

Ok, finally we stopped at a state park and got a map to do some hiking and started out. See this ridge below. We were hiking around it. The lady told us that it was not a "destination hike"... so we weren't trying to get to a certain point (like a waterfall or anything), just doing it for fun. We decided that we would go out to the one mile marker and then back... easy enough, right? HA HA HA

About a quarter to a half way in... piece of cake, beautiful views, nice clean shoes...

(I tried to get some better pictures of the height but if I even got close to the edge Russ started freaking out on me... something like 'get your butt away from the edge of that, you are not leaving me with three boys to raise')

Umm... then it got a little bit muddier...

And then more treacherous...

And started to get very difficult...

But we made it out one mile. See the red dirt in the picture... that's back where we started. The picture is zoomed in, it just doesn't do justice to how hard we worked. Time to head back.

The hike back proved to be my downfall. My shoes were covered in mud and slick. I fell about four times. The first time was a very HARD fall... big bruise on the butt and mud on my favorite shorts :( After the first fall they weren't as bad but I just never got my footing back as well as I had it. We both got VERY worn out. After this hike we were going to go to one other hike that would take us to a waterfall but we decided that we were done. We finished and decided to be done. We drove back down the canyon and back to the hotel. After showering and cleaning up we got some lunch and split up - Carmen to lay out, Russ to watch some bowl games... the perfect afternoon!! Gorgeous laying out weather :)