Hawaii Day TWO...

John was up early with the sun that 2nd day (see: not adjusting to time difference). Beautiful sunrise - but I was fine to miss it.

He did have some company though!

Where are we? Oh yeah, HAWAII!!

First thing in the morning - we wanted to try our hands at snorkeling. We went to a nice little beach/cove area in Turtle Bay called Kuilima Cove. It's a pretty protected cove area with quite a bit of marine life. Very nice small beach too. I wasn't really sure I was interested in snorkeling at all - but thought I would try it. I spent just a few minutes trying it out and quite enjoyed it! It wore everyone out - so we rested for a bit on the beach.

John diving in!

Cory completely worn out.

Next we drove further north around the coast to Waimea Falls. We hiked up to the falls through some gorgeous garden areas. So beautiful and relaxing with some very interesting vegetation.

John was the first one to volunteer to swim to the falls. I wasn't going to - but after watching him make it there, decided I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. How often do you get the chance to swim under a waterfall? Boy is that water powerful coming down! You have to really exert yourself to get over to the falls (especially without any kind of life preserving device). Once you were right by it, the force of the water plus not having much to hold on to (see sidenote below) made it even more difficult. The rocks are quite slippery - and sort of cave inwards, so there is not much of a foothold/ledge to stand on until you get right underneath the falls. Thank goodness John was already there to help me! Sara and Cory you really missed out!

*sidenote: there were probably 4 or 5 unsupervised little kids just hanging onto the rocks near the waterfall. They did not want to let anyone get their chance in there. A little bit annoying - but you can't be annoyed for long - you are in HAWAII swimming under a WATERFALL!

We ended that 2nd day with dinner in Haliewa and a stop at the famous Matsumoto's Shave Ice. Wasn't impressed the first time - but learned that it was the flavor(s) we chose. We tried again later in the trip and thoroughly enjoyed the SOUR flavor(s). Starting to make ourselves get used to the 4 hour time difference a little bit. I think we might have even stayed up until 8:30 this night!