Our first trip to Hawaii

What is a well planned trip without some weather delays?

We packed and headed to the airport only to find our plane coming from DFW to be delayed due to weather.  The airline rep said we would still be able to make our connector; she was right bc it too was delayed.  Once again we were looking at catching our flight out of LAX to HI with only moments to spare.  Then another delay at DFW put our flight out of our reach.  We got word upon our decent that there were several passengers on our flight making our same connector, so the airline decided to hold the plane for us.  Thank goodness, bc that was the last flight to HI until 9 am the next morning.  We left home at 10am and arrived at our resort on Kauai about 10pm local time which was 4am EST.

A little room service, since we'd only had airplane food, and off to sleep.  We arrived on Kauai at night, so we did not get to see any scenery on our way to our hotel.  But this is what we awoke to...

After a leisurely breakfast we got to drive back to the airport, seeing all the beauty we had missed the night before in the dark, to take our helicopter sightseeing tour.  It was AMAZING!!!

Here we are with our pilot, Gary.

our tour included a stop at the famous "Jurassic Falls" - the waterfall from the movie Jurassic Park (which I've never seen).  It was breathtaking.  All the beauty we saw in one tour was more than a lot of people see in a lifetime I could imagine.

 we took tons of pictures of the sites during our ride - this is just one of the coastlines we saw.  We also saw the Waimea Canyon, the Napoli coast, and the 4 different points of the island.  One of the most interesting things was seeing upclose the waterfall that we had viewed that morning from our hotel room.  It seemed so close from our room, but so much farther away with the perspective from the helicopter.

 We also enjoyed a sailing excursion, some paddleboarding (which I absolutely loved but Brent could do without -- it's a center of gravity thing), and a bit of snorkling (again, Brent not so much bc his facial hair wouldn't allow the mask to seal and he kept getting seawater in his mask).  The beach was very different than the ones we are used to visiting.  The sand was not so fine and was very brown.  We enjoyed a lot of time by the pool (where they bring you food and beverages) and had lots of opportunity to see some "European fashion."

We also attended the special Tahitian show - luau you might call it minus the pig on the spit - with the girls doing the hula and the guys swinging fire and such.  It was great!

Our final day was spent touring the entire island (which is only something like 28x32 miles).  We saw the Wailua waterfall which some of you may recognize as the waterfall from the opening scene of Fantasy Island,

spouting horn

and the Waimea Canyon.

Kauai is the "Garden Isle" because it gets a good amount of rain.  With rain comes rainbows...

The plane ride was certainly not my favorite part of the trip, but I'd go back tomorrow.  : )