Babymoon-final installment

Okay. These are the last ones, I promise. We have LOTS more, but if you want to see those, you have to come visit us! This is Kilauea Point, an amazing spot for wildlife. It's a sanctuary and it boasts all sorts of birds, plus sometimes you can see whales and dolphins offshore, which we did!!

All right, I know it's hard to see, but those two dark dots are dolphins. They were way out there, but we were able to look through binoculars and really see them. I even saw one leap out of the water and spin, which is how they got their name, spinner dolphins. And the next picture really is a whale fin. It's a humpback whale. I know it was miles out to sea, but I'd never seen a humpback from any distance, so I was thrilled. We saw it splash and shoot water from its blowhole.

And here we are, at Kilauea Lighthouse, where we saw the aforementioned dolphins and whales, along with huge frigate birds and albatrosses. It was pretty cool. After this outing (during which I got a sunburn) we went to the North Shore where it stormed like crazy and nearly flooded the road. After that we slogged through the drizzle to catch our late night flight. Now this deserves at least a paragraph.....




After all that wonderful relaxation, our flight was delayed, which made us unable to get our connecting flight in LAX. They moved us to another one. That one was delayed 3o minutes. Then an hour. Then cancelled altogether. Due to American's debacle with the grounded fleet, every other flight was booked. By now, we're wondering how we'll ever get out of L.A. And we had a baby shower the next day! DJ got on the phone and found us a flight out of a different airport in two hours. The shuttle took an hour to get there. I'm a wreck at this point, crying and totally tense. All relaxation gone! We shared our shuttle with this Russian lady, who was so sweet. She kept arguing with the driver that we needed to go to the airport first because "this lady is pregnant; she can't be upset!" Then she gave us chocolate. :-) Well, we get to the airport and that flight's been delayed three hours. We finally finally finally get to Dallas nine hours later than we were supposed to and have to trek all over everywhere to find our luggage, which got there long before we did. Ugh. But we made our shower the next day and all was well. Happy ending. I have shower pix, but it took forever to do these posts, so I'll save them for another day.
Aloha!
Vanessa

Babymoon-installment four

The first picture is Kalalau Valley on the Na Pali Coast. Even this little view of it was incredible. I don't know how many times I said "wow" the day we drove up the canyons. Na Pali is the place you see in all those unbelievable ads. And portions of it were used in the film Jurassic Park too.
This two shots are of Waimea Canyon. They say Mark Twain coined it the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. It was really really beautiful. It was so hazy that day that the photos just don't do it justice. The volcano on the Big Island had erupted the day before, so we don't know if maybe that had something to do with the haze or if it was just the weather. Kauai is pretty far from the Big Island. It was still really awe-inspiring.

This is Pihea Trail, the trail we hiked to see the view of Kalalau in the first picture. Yes, I hiked back up that. Granted, it wasn't really THAT far, but still, I was pretty proud of my pregnant self. I had to sit down when we got back to the top though. I was panting hard, but the views were worth it. Now if it had thrown me into labor.... maybe not so worth it....

Babymoon-installment three

Of course we went to a luau. It was really enjoyable. Native music, tasty food, lots of energy, great fun. I thought it was wonderful. Danny said it wasn't as big and dramatic as the one he saw on Oahu, but I loved all the noise and enthusiasm. The picture below is very cool. This is the fire dancer balancing the fire stick on his feet! He was fearless.

Here we are after a fabulous meal at the luau. Kalua pork, fried rice, lots of fruit. Yes, I tried the poi and no, I didn't like it. Below is a shot of Wailua Falls. These falls were used in the film Fantasy Island. Gorgeous spot!

Babymoon-installment two

This is our hotel, the Islander on the Beach. It was in Kapaa, which is on the east side of the island. I really loved it. It wasn't luxurious, but it was nice and quiet and just perfect for us. I think Danny might have been a little disappointed that there was no grand continental breakfast. But we ate mini-wheats and fresh pineapple on our lanai in the mornings and I loved it. You can see our room to the right of the picture where the towels are hanging.

Here's the view from our room. It wasn't supposed to be an ocean view room, but it worked out that we could get a glimpse of the waves. We even think we saw a whale or dolphin or something splashing out there one morning.

The hotel beach. It wasn't big or beautiful and not swimmable either. But it was nice to lie there and just listen to the waves roll in. We tried to catch the sunrise one morning, but it was too overcast. Margot said this looked like a Corona ad. That cracked me up.

Here I am, big and round, at Lydgate Beach. This was our first morning and we were just kind of looking around, exploring. We came back the next morning (or the next, can't remember) and snorkeled here. It was great fun. It's got all these huge lava rocks to break the surf and make it safe for swimming and such. And the rocks attract tons of fish. We swam around, looking at all kinds of creatures. At times we were just surrounded by fish. My favorites were the big blue and yellow surgeonfish. I don't know why we didn't buy a disposable underwater camera. What were we thinking?

Babymoon-installment one

So does this look like a romantic place or what? We had an amazing time in Kauai. I was a little limited on what I could do, being 7 months pregnant, but we still managed to see and do a lot of wonderful things. Such as see part of the famous Na Pali Coast, which can only be viewed from boat, aircraft, or seriously rugged hiking trails, none of which I was allowed to do. But, we did get amazing glimpses of it here from Pihea lookout. Oh and I wore a plumeria blossom in my hair every day. It made me feel very "island."

I thought I'd post some people pictures first. They're always my favorite. I love these shots of us together. This is of the two of us at Opeaka'a Falls, which I think I spelled wrong. This picture was taken by Martin and Michaela, our new Czech friends we kept running into everywhere.

These sunset shots are some of favorites of the whole trip. It was so beautiful. We were having a really nice dinner at the Beach House restuarant in Poipu. We had a view of the ocean from our table and watched surfers while we ate really yummy fish dishes. Then at sunset, nearly the whole crowd of diners went outside to take pictures. It was really lovely. Sigh.

More birthday butterflies

Here are a few more pictures from the Butterfly Palace. Oh, yeah... I should say these were taken with our very groovy new camera. We really like it. It can even do little movies. I tried to add one at the bottom of this post, but it didn't work. I'll have to practice on that; I've never done much with videos and such. We bought the camera partly for our trip to Kauai, but mostly for the baby. I think it will be perfect for recording every little grin and slobber. We're really looking forward to annoying y'all with incessant posts, pictures and movies!

Birthday Butterflies

For my 30th birthday, Danny took me to the Butterfly Palace in Branson. We'd been before when it was in a small temporary place but now it's bigger and better. It's packed with tropical plants and trees and striking orchids and, of course, butterflies. It was kind of perfect since orchids are my favorite flower and I've loved butterflies since I was very small. It was really neat to see all these colorful butterflies of various sizes and shapes flitting all over the place. One landed briefly in Danny's hair. None landed on me though. I wasn't flowery enough.










After you spend all the time you want to in the butterfly sanctuary itself, you can go through a little place where they have lizards and centipedes and creepy crawlies. They had one aquarium full of, seriously, 50 enormous roaches. I nearly freaked. Danny literally had to ask me if I was okay. And the last thing is the mirror maze, which was really cool. They have 64 mirrors that you walk through. It can't be that big but when you're in there, it feels like you're in this vast forest you might never escape. It was pretty fun.