Wet n Wild -- Lucky to be Alive!

On Monday we went to Wet n Wild Hawaii, which is only 5 minutes from our resort! Although we paid the full amount to get in (less a $5 per ticket coupon George found in a magazine) we were disappointed that 3 of the 5 large rides were closed for maintenance.

No one really looked at Damon before we left--doesn't he looked so coordinated!

There really wasn't a lot of people there and we secured a prime spot under a hut at the wave pool.

At 1:30pm everyone had to leave the wave pool, and they restricted access. You could pay $10 extra and you got a quick surfing lesson and then the waves were a little faster and harder and you could try to ride your board. Only about 10 people were in for the lesson but many more paid to go in with the larger waves. We just sat and watched. Some people knew what they were doing and others had no clue--which is why we watched!!

They did have a ride that we hadn't seen before at a water park which was quite fun! It was a short slide but instead of leading right into the water, this stopped about 6 feet above the water! When I went in, I never thought I was going to get back up to the surface, the water was quite deep. Damon loved it!

I saved the best story for last! We all could ride the Raging Rapids so up the steps we went, which was quite a hike. Since there was a line, I was reading the rules and regulations stating that the weight on these 6-person rafts were to be between 350-600 pounds. Well, we all get in and what a ride we had coming down! First George was going down backwards and no one likes going backward, so he had no idea what was coming. We were going so fast and twisting and turning, I almost landed on George sitting across from me at one point. Damon smacked the side of his head just below Nicole's eye--hopefully she doesn't get a black eye! Brandon almost flipped the raft over at one point. And the ride just went on and on and on. Finally it ended and we all got out, lucky to be alive! Then it hit me, and I started adding up our approximate weights, and we by far exceeded 700 pounds! The rest of day went a little slower after that ride, let me tell you!

Visit to the Dole Pineapple Plantation

After we booked our trip to Hawaii, I started looking around for things to do. One of the things that popped out at me was the Honolulu 5K. I think Nicole would have ran it with me, but Brandon wasn't too interested. The more I looked into, the more complicated it seemed. We would have had to pick up our race materials on Saturday at some predetermined locations, which we were not familiar with and then the race started at 6:30am (which I guess that wouldn't have been the problem) but Honolulu is about 30 minutes away from us. The race was to benefit the Hawaii school system (all islands) so when you registered you had to pick a school to donate a part of your application fee. I think this would have been a major race! I decided not to try that.

Our resort sits next to a harbor that has a little lagoon, our hotel has a lagoon, the resort next to us has a lagoon, and the Disney resort has a lagoon. The public has access to these lagoons but not up into the resort grounds. They have a nice sidewalk that runs the entire length which is almost 1.5 miles long. I decided to run that. What surprised me was that George wanted to go with me. We left about 6:45am. Well, I quickly passed him up. I ran 3.1 miles! It was so humid out by time we stopped! But it felt good to do a little exercise while on vacation.

Sunday's agenda included the morning at the pools and lagoon, then we ate lunch in our room and was off to the Dole Plantation. We decided to do the Train ride and the Maze of course! Here are a few pictures from that. After that we decided to drive up to the North Shore, now that was quite the ride, and that deserves a blog to itself, so hopefully I can get around to that at some point.

Remember this place? Dole Plantation was a few minutes up the road from where we ate supper last night.

Young pineapple plants

Close-up of young pineapple plants

Can you see the pineapples?

More pineapples

Water reservoir

In 2008, this was the world's largest maze!

You had to find 8 secret stations and trace the icon.

Done in 33 minutes, thanks to Brandon! I just noticed they messed the dates up! I promise weren't lost in there for over a day!

Driving up the West Coast

Saturday, April 27th: George and I wanted to drive up the West Coast from our resort. The kids didn't want to go, so we went ourselves. I just loved seeing the mountains on the right side while the beach and coastline was on the left.

We were quite surprised, but the towns we passed along the main highway did not look the nicest. Some of the streets off the main road were dirt! At every beach you would see pop-up tents and camping tents with lots and lots of coolers, grills, and food. Several birthday parties were going on with ballons and lots of people. We also saw many large fishing poles.

Here are some of the photos we took.

First Full Day in Hawaii

Well, my eyes popped open at 3:45am (so that's 8:45am your time). George said he was up at 5am, although we didn't actual get out of bed until almost 7am. Both Brandon (I know that's a SHOCK) and Damon were up shortly after us also.

Here are the views we have from our room, which is considered Mountain Side. Not too bad... we can still see the ocean and we get the view of the harbor.

George, Brandon, and I decided to make a grocery run and we were actually standing in front of the Target at 7:55am waiting for it to open at 8am, like how embarassing was that? WOW, the grocery prices over here are CRAZY and not in a good way! Everything was really expensive! A box of cereal was over $6.00! We also noticed the gas prices--$4.25/gallon for the cheap gas!

While we were shopping, Damon and Nicole headed down to the lagoon and pool WITHOUT suntan lotion. After we got groceries put away, we found them so they could get some proper sun protection. Here are some photos we took from the pool bar overlooking the pool and lagoon.

 

George and I drove up the Western Shore in the afternoon, the kids really were not interested in going. So we went and I took a ton of photos, so hopefully those will make another blog.

Brandon wanted Barbeque for supper tonight. Well, we are on the far west side of Oahu, and not too much is over here. The closest shopping center is a few miles away and the main restuarants we found was Denny's, Chili's, and Outback. THAT IS IT!

So trying to find regular BBQ restuarants sort of close to us was a challenge. So we picked Molly's Smokehouse as it was the closest, about 20 minutes away. About half way there, George asks me, "Well is this a sit down restuarant?" I'm like "How do I know?" Then he says, "Well, didn't you read the reviews?" We were actually driving on the highway while looking for places, so how could I find places, read reviews, and determine their seating??? 

Well, we are driving in the middle of nowhere it seemed and then we came to the town, which didn't look so nice. Then we find the restuarant, its like on the first floor of a very-run down apartment building or motel. And it had 3 parking spaces out front. Well, luckily, the inside was a lot nicer than the outside and the food was pretty good! Thank goodness!

On our way back we stopped and walked along the path that connects our hotel's lagoon with the other hotel lagoons. Here are our pictures from that.