Kauai- Sunday- Waimea Canyon

Sunday we got up early to head to church. We saw this beautiful rainbow on the way! 

 So most of the people who attend this ward end up being tourists. They had guys out to help us know where to park even. They had it down to a science! I was thinking how this poor ward is busy to staff a full ward with a tiny amount of steady people. They even had security guards by the doors. It was kind of crazy. It was nice to make it to church during our trip.

 Tyson needed to be ordained a teacher and decided to wait a extra week to do it in kauai! Then my dad and Nate could be there too. How may people can say they had that done in Hawaii?

 Our only nice group shot of our trip. During the worst light. I always seem to do that to my family but we were usually swimming to doing something else later. And at this point we were dressed nice.

 We ran to the spouting horn which was really close to our resort. It was pretty cool. Not sure I would drive a long way to see it though.

Waimea canyon- they say it's like the grand canyon of the pacific. It was kind of a lot of driving but a nice little activity for a Sunday.

 This part reminded of me the movie Moana!

 I pushed everyone to drive all the way up to the top of the canyon to see the look out. I've seen photos and it's spectacular! But not this day. Too much fog. We couldn't see anything at the top. I was so sad.

 We stopped at the BEST snow cone place ever. It's called jo jo's. Bryan still talks about it.

 They were HUGE. SO good.

We wanted to see the sunset again.

 we dumped the kids minus Blake with my mom to play with the cousins.

 These little newts or lizards or whatever they were were EVERYWHERE. They would scare me when I would walk around. They loved trying to catch them.

 The view from My moms room.

Kauai ATV Day

 We always start at the pool every morning! The kids couldn't get enough of it.

 When we were planning our trip my cousin (who has family in Kauai and went with her kids a year or two ago) told me one of the best things she has done in kauai was a ATV tour. So I looked it up. And it was expensive. So I gave up with the idea. Then as I was thinking about since my parents had given us a bunch of money for Christmas and my grandma Jenkins did also I used that (and a little more) to pay for my older boys and I to do this. I knew my Dad would love it so he want with us as well. Ty, Blake, Stockton, Bryan and I with my dad did the tour. They give you t-shirts to wear because you get dirty.

 We had two ATV's so my dad drove one and Bryan the other. I look back in ours and Stockton told me the empty seat was for my Grandpa Jenkins who had died 4 years before. He was such good friends with my Grandpa and it surprised me he would even think of that!

Our first stop was a cool tunnel through the mountain. They made it to take sugar cane though the mountain because it was so much faster then going around. 

 Bryan loved to hit every mud puddle and I ended up plastered in mud. Note the group pictures later of the group and I have the most mud.

Our second stop was in a old WW2 bunker. During the war soldiers hid in the mountain in case it was bombed like pearl harbor. It would be a horrible place to stay! I have a bad picture of the wall where they would mark how  many days they were in there. It was a lot.

 Our last stop was this beautiful waterfall!

 They had us jump in to get the mud off. And since it was warm and even though it rained a little bit it actually felt good.

Know if you know me well you would know I don't jump into waterfalls. I suck at swimming and I'm not daring at all. Ever. But my kids were cheering me on and they all did it. Even Stockton! Even my dad! So Bryan promised to help me when I jumped in and I did it. And I didn't enjoy it. But I was glad my boys saw me do something hard even though they still tease me about it.

 Pano of the waterfall. They fed us snacks and drinks while we were here too.

 Then we stopped and talked about all the cool movies they shot here. Like Jurassic park- the first movie and the Jurassic world movie was shot here. Indiana Jones had some parts. Pirates of the Caribbean. The list goes on. If anything else this section was so beautiful!

 The tour guides took pictures of our group along the way. I'm guessing it was as much for liability as anything else but I enjoyed that they gave us the photos after it was over. This was toward the end of our tour and look how clean most of the people look! Then look at my yellow shirt!

 Can you see the face in the mountain behind then? The picture makes it hard to see. This was also where they fed the cow to the dinosaur in Jurassic park and some of the props are still in the grass because they had to leave for a hurricane.

 We loved our tour. Once in a lifetime memories. My boys still talk about this. I think my favorite part was hearing Stockton singing the Jurassic park theme song the whole time we drove.

 We tried to find some good places to eat. It was actually really hard! Our first night we tried a place by us where we could actually find parking and after waiting a hour for our pizza they had never made it! My kids were starving! Was not impressed. They did give us a pizza for free but I sent Bryan back to the condo with the boys to get them something to eat. This night we went to a Mexican restaurant off of a golf course with live music. It was really good and fun too.

 Isn't our resort amazing? You can see part of the slide behind him.