Kauai Trip

I spent the last week in Kauai with some guys from work. I have the most wonderful wife that allowed me to go on this guys trip. The background to the story is the company I work for does a lot of charity work and we try to raise a lot of money for charity. Back in December they were doing a silent auction with different things being auctioned off from lunch with certain people, extra vacation days, some prizes, etc ...... but the big thing was a trip to Kauai to stay at a condo for a week. One of the leaders of our company offered his condo for a week. A few of us from work put in what we thought was a low bid and didn't think we would win, but we ended up winning. Jackie was so awesome to let me go with us having our brand new baby. Here are some pictures from the trip.

This is the patio of the condo. We had the most amazing view of the ocean and the sunset every night. Every night I just slept off the patio and listened to the waves all night and watched the amazingly bright stars all night. The condo was a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom good size place. It could easily sleep 10 people.
This was a view of the sunrise the first morning. We had great weather the whole time. It never rained during the day. A couple of the nights we had big rain storms, but the storms only happened during the night.
I took pictures every night of the sunsets. Here are a couple of pictures.
Every night the sunsets were just a little bit different.
Here we are chilling at the condo, watching some NBA playoffs in between our adventures.
The first morning we were there we headed down to the beach right below the condo. We were down there just after sunrise and snorkeled around this beach for a couple of hours. There was a lot of coral here and tons of fish.
Jake and Ed down on the beach. Jake found this sweet seashell.
We went down to this beach a few times. We spent most days either snorkeling or boogie boarding. We took a guide book with us that showed us all these different beaches and things to explore.
The great thing about this beach was there was hardly anyone ever there. We basically had this whole beach to ourselves.
Not only did we do a lot of exploring we did a lot of eating. This was one of our most favorite places to eat called Kalypso's. Jake and Jared went deep sea fishing and caught 3 huge fish. They took their tuna fish to a local restaurant so they could use it as sushi. The sushi chef even prepared some sushi for us from that fish they caught. I tried sushi for the first time. It was pretty good.
This was probably our most favorite beach. It was called Tunnels Beach. We spent hours and hours here snorkeling. We went back there more than once. The only beach we only went to twice other than the beach right below our condo.
In the guide book it told us about this place Kipu Falls, we decided to visit it and found this little trail to walk down. As we were walking down that trail, I couldn't believe there was going to be a waterfall in this area.
We come around the corner and the waterfall and pond just appear. If you look closely you can see the rope swing and see the ladder to get to the top where that guy is at in the water.
Here is the stream leading to the waterfalls.
Here is the rope swing. I will have to try to post videos of us swinging on the rope swing. It was quite high and I was nervous going the first time. It was a lot of fun.
After going on the rope swing 3 times I decided to jump off of the waterfall. That was actually less scary than the rope swing. This place was a lot of fun and the water was so refreshing.
Here we are at Tunnels beach again. I did my best to stay in the shade when I wasn't in the ocean swimming or snorkeling. I made it through the whole week without getting sunburned.
Kauai was so green and beautiful.
Jared and I went and played golf one evening. We didn't get there in time to play 18, so we were only able to play 9 but they let us play the 9 that went by the ocean. It was the most beautiful course. Amazing views from every hole. Here I am putting for birdie on a 3 par after hitting over a part of the ocean. Needless to say I missed the birdie putt, and the par putt, and settled for a bogey.
Here I am hitting into a sand trap down by the green. If you look closely you can see the ocean in the background.
Jared and I.
We finished right before the sunset. Our last day there, Jared and I went golfing again down by the airport. That course was amazing as well. It didn't have the ocean holes as they were remodeling the ocean holes while they added enough holes to make another 9. I played really well there, but was pretty inconsistent.
As we were hiking down to an area called Queen's Bath, this was a little waterfall along the trail.
Here was the sign as we got to the entrance of Queen's Bath. Needless to say this sign didn't make us want to get in.
As the waves hit these lava rocks, they would make the biggest splashes.
They call it Queen's Bath because the waves hit the Lava Rocks and then leave water in certain sections where you can swim. I ended up getting in one that I thought was safe enough as there were 10 other people in it. Well there was a big wave set that hit the rocks as I was in there and made the pool area a big tidal wave pool and I was knocked back and cut my left on the lava rock. I got out as soon as I could get back to the edge. The ocean is amazingly strong.
One day we headed down to the south side of the island as we stayed on the North side. The south side was less green, seemed less humid, and was way drier. We spent hours boogie and body surfing in the waves. We swam with turtles at this beach. They were every where.
We next headed up to the Grand Canyon of Hawaii. It was so beautiful. It was hard to believe that this would be there.
Mike, Jake, and Jared.

This was Hanalei bay and went and watched the sunrise my last day there. One of the local surfer girls said this is where the girl from Soul Surfer lost her arm. I guess she was there all week surfing. I watched the surfers for a while but couldn't see her. I will have to look up her story online and see exactly what part she was at.
This was a place called Secret Beach. We asked one guy for directions to here and he refused to tell us. The waves were so big that I didn't dare go in. Jared went in and a surfer swam in and told him to get out of the water unless he wanted to be swept back out into the ocean. He said it wasn't a place to swim.
Here are some more pictures from the last morning.
We had a great time and did a ton of exploring of the island. I wished I would have taken more pictures. I'm thankful that my wife was so willing to let me go and experience such a fun and relaxing week. Kauai would be an awesome place to live!!!