S&N Fam Come to Town--Hanakapiai, Turtles, and Sunset

Next up: Hanakapiai Falls hike.  I forgot what being in a big family looks like until we were prepping the night before.

Scott and Kate:

Overlook to Ke'e Beach:

It was super windy at the .5 mile lookout over the Napali Coast.  I made some comment about holding on to your hats...and then watched as mine flew off my head and over the cliff.

So glad we took the time to take sunny pictures, because on the way back it was rain, rain, rain.  Rain is fun on hikes.  No biggie.

Natalie was a trooper and hiked with Audrey on her back most of the way.  Audrey and Kate are about the same size and carrying Kate any significant distance on my back sounds like torture.  Way to go, Mama.

We reached Hanakapiai Beach and ate lunch, played in the stream, and added to the cairns.

We made it to the bamboo forest before Brady and I turned around with Zac, Brynlee, and Kate.  We had a meeting we had to make that night.  Brynlee and Zac tried to swing from bamboo vines.

Kate let us know that she was getting "really, really tired."

She looked like this precisely 30 seconds later.

Once we got back to the river, Kate woke up and hiked the entire way back by herself.  It was raining hard at times on the way back.  The kids made themselves umbrellas.

Brynlee and Zachary were mountain goats on the way back.  The best part of having Brynlee with us was how impressed she was with our stories.  We make up stories when we hike and she was all ears. It made me feel like a million bucks every time she gasped and when she was so obviously caught up in riding dolphins to escape pirate ships.

The kids also made rivers of water to clean their dirty hands.

On the hike, a couple right behind us said they saw my hat and it wasn't very far off the trail.  Brady had just spent the night before telling Scott and Natalie about many questionable decisions we've made in the outdoors, and this wasn't going to be another one of those stories.  We realized it was really close, though, so he hopped down and retrieved it (his hands were covered in mud).  I love this hat.

Scott and Natalie's gang pulled in after 9pm that night, successfully reaching the waterfall and grabbing some souvenirs on the way home.  It rained and rained on them, too, but they came home impressed and excited to tell us about the falls.  Those are some tough kids!

I love this picture of our shoes drying out after the hike.  Thanks to the power of Oxy Clean, our clothes are red-dirt free.

Sunday morning, we all went to church.  S&N originally planned to drive up the canyon, but decided against it and hung out with us all afternoon.  It was so relaxing and fun to have a day to kick around the house.

We went and checked out Koloa Landing, ate dinner, and then ran off to see the turtles and sunset.

The turtles were hands-down the best part of our time with them.  We've taken a lot of excited visitors to this spot to check out a few and sometimes many turtles, but none as enthusiastic as their family.  There was at least one baby and one mama, and one other.  Every time they came to the surface, it was a chorus of squeals, jumping, and pointing.  Even Zachary, who has seen these a hundred times, thought this might be the most exciting sighting of his life.

We ran to the point and even caught the sunset.

After a charming evening, we ended with chocolate tart.  Yum.