We flew into Honolulu, and after a short stop-over between flights, went on to Kauai, where we stayed for 5 nights at the Sheraton in Poipu, and then went on to Maui. Kauai was definitely our favorite of the two islands. It was prettier, less crowded and more laid back than Maui....and we got to see several whales, one within 10 feet of our boat!
[Click on any of the thumbnail images to view 4x blow-up]
| This is us having a drink at the airport in Honolulu while waiting for our connecting flight to Kauai. |
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| Me, outside at the airport as we walked between terminals. |
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| On Kauai, we stayed at the Sheraton at Poipu. It was nice...not great, but nice. The grounds were very well kept, and everyone was very friendly, but I'd rate the rooms more on par with a typical Holiday Inn -- decent, but nothing great. |
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| Here is a look at the Sheraton's grounds |
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| This bird grabbed a fish from one of the pond areas on the grounds, but didn't appear to know what to do next. The fish looked way too big to eat, but he wasn't about to toss it back either. |
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| Cheryl, with our building behind us. We weren't beach-side, but we had a nice courtyard view. |
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| Cheryl catching her first Hawaiian rays of sunshine...and reading a book on Hawaii, helping to decide what we wanted to do first. |
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| A view showing part of the pool, looking out toward the beach. One cool thing about the Sheraton is that right off its beach was some excellent snorkeling! |
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| Me, being a lazy bum....but hey, isn't that what vacationing is all about? |
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| Cheryl, in our room, posing next to some flowers I got her. |
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| Me, outside on our way over to dinner, I think. |
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| Another view toward the ocean from a courtyard between two other buildings of the Sheraton near its lobby. |
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| A couple of ocean kayaks full race by as we sat having a drink and watching the sun set. |
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| Cheryl, anxiously awaiting some yummy dinner. |
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| Just a few minutes from the Sheraton was "Spouting Horn". Here's a couple of shots of the ocean... |
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| ...and hear is "Spouting Horn" -- a lava hole that waves go into underneath and blow out the top, making a horn-like sound, which makes it different than other similar holes. |
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| Chickens! Roosters! They were everywhere on Kauai! A local told us that a lot of them escaped back when hurricane Iniki came through, and in the wild, they're just breading like crazy! |
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| Across a little bay from Spouting Horn was "The Beach House" restaurant. We ate there one night and it was excellent. We both highly recommend it. |
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| A closer view of The Beach House restaurant. |
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| Cheryl and I in the restaurant of the Hyatt Regency, a couple of miles from the Sheraton. I can't remember the name of the restaurant, but it was pretty good...though I thought it was a bit over-priced for the quality of food...but the grounds at the Hyatt were fantastic -- maybe where we'll stay if we ever get to go back. |
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On our second day, we drove up the east side of the island, to the north
shore -- which is as far as the road goes before you hit the Napali Coast. This is along the way up the east side; I'm not exactly sure where...maybe near Kapa'a? |
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| This is the Kalihi Wai Valley, just before you get to Princeville. |
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| Us, standing at the same valley overlook. | |
| I think this is still at the same place, but taking the picture more to the right -- toward the ocean....but it may be a couple of miles further up the road, closer to Princeville |
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| This is in Hanalei, looking inland. |
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| Still in Hanalei, zoomed in more to show one of the waterfalls flowing down the mountain. |
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| A cute little church in Hanalei. |
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After many curves and one-lane bridges, the road ends at Haena State Park
-- the furthest you can drive before hitting the Napali coast.
This is me standing in the park, just past the beach. There's a trail there you can take to the Napali coast, but it's a long and difficult trail and we didn't have time to try it -- it's 11 miles, and requires a camping permit to go further than the first 2 miles. |
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| Again, me, with the ocean waves crashing behind me. |
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| This is looking basically west from where I'm standing in the picture above. You can see the beginning of the Napali coast in the background. |
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| Cheryl and I, testing out the timer feature of the camera. |
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| Me, on the trail heading back to the beach & parking area. |
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| Chickens! Yes, even "at the end of the road", in seemingly nowhere, there were tons of chickens just wandering around on and near the beach. They must just like sunbathing because we never noticed them actually swimming or surfing. |
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| Heading back toward civilization, we paused for a picture at this cave. You can't really tell, but that's Cheryl down near the edge of the water. |
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| A waterfall along the road. |
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| This is the Kilauea Lighthouse. We actually saw some whales in the distance, but didn't get any good pictures of them. |
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| I couldn't decide which picture I liked better, so here's another one of the Kilauea Lighthouse. |
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| The helicopter. We took our tour on Air-1 Inter-Island Helicopters. They have the fastest helicopters, so you don't waste time on the boring stuff, and they're the only outfit that fly with the doors removed for a completely unobstructed view...which came in handy for taking pictures and videotaping the trip. |
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| Me, Cheryl, and the pilot, just before take-off. |
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Waimea Canyon from the air. The video came out better than the pictures, but these give you an idea. Cheryl was taking pictures from the center seat, which didn't help, and the movement of the helicopter didn't help much. There are more pictures taken of the canyon further below, taken while on foot. |
 
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The Napali coast by air. It truly is beautiful, and there are
countless waterfalls -- far more than these pictures show.
There were a lot more we didn't get clear pictures of due to the movement of the helicopter, but they're imprinted in my mind forever. |
 
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Moving inland from the Napali coast reveals even more waterfalls. The middle and right pictures are actually in the crater of the volcano that created Kauai. It is very wet in the crater. |
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| Just before landing we spotted a whale in the water. Okay, so the picture didn't come out great, but wait until you see some of the other whale pictures we got during our catamaran cruise, further below. |
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After the helicopter tour, we drove to Waimea Canyon where we hiked to a
waterfall. This picture is taken from the road along the way. Pretty, isn't it! |
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| ...and another... |
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| ...and another... |
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| The most visible waterfall in the canyon. |
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| The same fall, zoomed in a little more. |
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| Cheryl and I at the overlook. Yes, we're wearing jeans and she's got on a sweatshirt -- the helicopter ride was chilly, and it's not too hot at the top of the canyon either, due to the altitude. |
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| Me, probably at the same place, but maybe at another similar overlook along the way. |
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| This is taken from another overlook. I think this is much closer to the trail-head. |
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| We're closer to that same waterfall now, so luck you, you get to see more pictures of it. |
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| ...and another. |
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| A wider-angle view of the canyon from the last overlook before we got to the trail head. |
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| Chickens! Yes, more chickens. This time in the parking lot for the overlook. I wasn't kidding when I said they were everywhere on Kauai! On the beaches. In the middle of the island. In parking lots. Everywhere. We actually missed them when we got to Maui! |
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| Okay, now we're hiking. The trail starts out muddy, and going through a thickly wooded area, but then you pop out along the edge of the canyon. |
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| Another view from the canyon trail on our way to the waterfall. |
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| ...and another... |
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| ...and another (zoomed in on part of the one above)... |
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| ...and another, this time of a helicopter flying through the canyon, like we had done a couple hours before... |
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...and another, a little more zoomed in on the helicopter.
We're almost to the falls. |
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Okay. We made it...and...that's it?!?! These are the falls we hiked
to see?!?!
We were expecting those big falls we had been taking pictures of. |
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| Actually, this might be those falls, but whatever falls they are, we're at the top of them. That little one then flowed a little further down this river/creek to... |
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| ...this edge where it disappeared into seemingly nowhere. So, this may have been the top of those falls shown in the pictures above. |
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A few miles past the trail-head is the end of the road at Koke'e State
Park. This is an overlook in the park, looking out over roughly the middle of the Napali coast. |
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| Another in the same place. The views were beautiful. |
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| And another, but this one with my beautiful bride in the foreground. |
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| Still the same place. I decided it was another great place to try the "stitch" mode of my camera to see how well it would piece together multiple pictures into one wide one. Not too bad, eh? |
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| Still at the same place....me. |
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| Yes, STILL at the same place, a zoomed-in shot of waterfalls that were in the distance and to the right side of the other pictures. |
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A bird...walking...in mud...near the parking lot.
Hey, at least it's not another chicken! |
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You're going to have to trust me on this one...A green sea turtle.
He was a little camera-shy. While snorkeling, we saw a couple of them swimming around with us. |
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| Cheryl testing her mask |
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| Cheryl again. |
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| Cheryl (which one, I don't know) and a lot of other snorkelers...just before I jumped in, too. |
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A BABY WHALE! Still aboard the catamaran, these pictures are pretty cool -- a very lucky, close encounter with a whale! We were just zipping along and all of a sudden we stopped because we practically ran over a whale! A baby whale was riding the bow, like dolphins do, and it's mother was nowhere to be seen. It was literally just 10-20 feet off the side of the boat, and he (or she) hung out for a good 5 minutes, affording ample photo and video opportunities. According to the boat captain, it was probably only a couple days old. Hopefully it wasn't an orphan, or it wouldn't live much longer. They drink 300 gallons of mother's milk per day and put on 150 pounds per day! There's a link to some video of the whale & dolphins on the main honeymoon web page.
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Bye, bye baby whale. |
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Okay, now for some Spinner Dolphins! These two were from the camera, taken by Cheryl. It's very hard to get a still picture of them when you're not sure when they'll pop up out of the water, so... |
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...these four are frames captured from the video I got of them. There were a couple of pods of them just swimming along side the boat. Every once in a while one of them would jump up and do a spinning flip -- thus their name, "Spinner" dolphins. There's a link to some video of the whale & dolphins on the main honeymoon web page. |
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| A picture of the Napali Coast, this time as seen from the ocean. |
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| Cheryl, wondering why I'm taking a picture of her. |
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| The Napali coast, wondering why I'm taking a picture of it. |
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| More Napali coastline. |
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| In the distance is a missile test range, and if you look closely, you can see a navy boat in the water. I think it's there to chase after the missiles and recover them....or maybe just to track them...or maybe just to fish from. (The crew was fishing off the back of the boat!) |
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| Cheryl not wondering why I'm taking a picture of her...because she didn't know I was taking a picture of her. |
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I suppose most people will just think "okay, whatever", but this, in the
distance, is the site of the WWVH antennas. WWVH is the Hawaiian transmission site for the broadcast of the atomic-clock radio signal. WWV (the main site) is in Fort Collins, Colorado. |
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A WHALE!
Okay, a speck in the distance...but really, it is a whale. It's really hard to catch them jumping because by the time you snap the picture, they're back down in the water. This time it's an adult. |
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A FRANK! Me, enjoying a cold one |
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A NEWLYWED COUPLE! Cheryl and I enjoying the boat trip...and each other. |
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