Part Deux

I know that it has been quite some time since part one came about but, you see, I have been busy. When we arrived home from the journey, there were piles of orders, to drag me back to reality, oh, and the little thing called Stitches West, but I digress.

 

To say that I wish that I was on a beach watching my grandchildren would be a really big DUH moment, but today, with the beautiful and brilliant mountain sunshine, I am pining just a little bit less but never the less, I am back to the journey.

 

With the restriction of work and school, we stole one week from the grasp of the Winter Monster and squeezed every last bit of joy from our time on Kauai. I have to say, after driving all around the island, in search of what Kauai means, the place where we spent the majority of our time was in our back yard, where Jacob became a little web footed being and Syd was a happy little baby caressed by the warm breezes.

You have got to love the cocky swagger of this 6 year old with his family in the water.

Daddy and Syd were hanging out on one of our beach afternoons and you can certainly tell a cautious Mama by how covered up this little babe was.

I spent a lot of time with her and the belongings but had a chance to watch some big sea turtles ride the surf in to feast on seaweed stuck to the lava rock. I can certainly see why having such a sturdy shell is so important, watching this creature slam into the rocks, over and over again. I guess that watching for the turtles is a regular evening activity and I could not get enough of it. I say that THIS is a hard way to make a living.

One by one, the family became more enamored with boogie boarding and the nearby cove served as a perfect place for them to have a heck of a lot of fun. I could watch them and the whales, too!

We took a LOT of pictures at this beach and Erik, with his enormous lens, caught Lauren being thrown around by a wave. This is one of MY favorite pictures of the trip, as the two of them and Rod watched the high speed pictures go by. I get very happy, when I look at this one.

This place makes you slow down and appreciate the little things.

On one of our days, we headed up to Waimea Canyon. Lauren and Brian had flown over it, on their honeymoon (yes, Syd returned to the scene...) and this was their first drive up. What a gorgeous place. We did see helicopters flying over this scene and they looked like birds in the distance, simply because this is so vast.

I love this shot of Lauren, Brian and the kids.

Another great stop on that side of the Island is the Kauai Coffee Plantation. I got hooked on their coffee when Brenda Patipa brought some home and I loved tasting their different coffees so much that I joined their "club", so that I could look forward to a bit of the island, every morning. This style of building is so simple but a real piece of this land.

We did make it up to Hanalei and got to see the beach where Lauren & Brian tied the knot but MAN was it stormy up there, that day. It was good that it took us as long as it did to get up there, that day because we avoided getting into the hike up the mountain in what ended up being a downpour. There were red flags up at all of the beaches and so there were no photo opportunites to be had as we were hunched against the rain. Hanalei is for the adventurous and the homes are built on big stilts, against the storm surge. It is beautiful and lush but give me Poipu and the sun.

Our time came to an end, much too fast. We had to say goodbye to new friends...

Naps on the beach...

and this...

At Stitches, people said that I looked rested or something. I don't know but I left my heart at this laidback place. I brought home lots of delicious smelling lotions from Malie which has kept my sense memory alive. I had to sleep with the surf sounds for the week that we returned to the mountains (I usually love the rain sounds) and have let it go, finally.

I thank my step-father, Lenny, who would have loved this trip. He was a musician in the Navy band, back in WWII and I have a lot of shots of him in tropical areas. He loved to go go go and while my mom never wanted to travel, he would have been so happy to know that we went, together, as one big family. It was a privilege and a pleasure to spend these days with my grown children and the wee ones and I would do it again, in a heartbeat.

 P.S.

These kids were the greatest travel companions.

 

Comments

[AlisonH]

Beautiful, Lisa. Thank you for taking the rest of us along too.

[Janice]

What a lovely travel journal, thank you for sharing. But wait a minute, did you all fly first class? It's the oooonly way to fly! lol

[Lisa S]

Yes, we did. It was a Big Treat and SO worth it. They treated us like Gold on Hawaiian Airlines and Jakey said that he was going to have to tell his Dad that he liked the Front Of The Plane. Hah! It will be hard to go back to the Cattle Car, to be sure...