Hawaii Part 1

As you probably know, Doug and I went to Oahu for a week to celebrate the end of tax season.  We left Wednesday, April 16th and got back last Thursday.  It was such a fun week, and I have so much to share.  Because the trip was a week long, and I have about a million pictures, I've broken it up into four posts.  That way it will hopefully not get too long and boring to read.  Hope you enjoy reading about our fun!

Day One - Wednesday April 16th

We left early Wednesday morning, and arrived in Honolulu about 2:30 in the afternoon.  Hawaii is four hours earlier than home this time of year, so we really spent about 11 hours traveling.  In that time, we didn't have a chance to have lunch so by the time we arrived in Honolulu, we were starving.  We picked up our luggage, got our rental car, and decided to grab a quick bite to eat before heading to the North Shore.  Unfortunately, Honolulu traffic had a different plan, and we ended up spending about an hour barely moving, only to make it three miles in that time.  It was crazy!  We finally made it to food, got replenished, and made our way to Sunset beach.

We stayed in a VRBO house that was located directly across the street from the world famous Sunset Beach. Once we arrived, we unpacked our things, and headed across the street to check out the beach.  It was beautiful and the waves were quite large, bigger than we were expecting for the time of year.  We spent a little time watching the surfers and then went back to our rental to relax and unwind a little after the long day.  We went to bed pretty early as we were both exhausted and eager to start our first full day in paradise!

Day Two - Thursday April 17th

We woke up extremely early since we weren't quite adjusted to Hawaii time.  We both went for a run along the path that spans the entire stretch of the North Shore. It's a pretty neat little trail that was used extensively by bikers, walkers, and runners, to make their way around the North Shore.  After our run, we took showers and headed to the grocery store to pick up some essentials for the week.  We like renting vacation homes because we have access to a kitchen and usually a BBQ so we are able to do some cooking while we're there.  It's nice to not have to eat out for every meal, especially breakfast and lunch.  After we got groceries, we headed to the beach.  We had heard that the Haleiwa Alii Beach Park right in the town of Haleiwa was a good place to go, especially for beginning surfers, so we decided to go check it out.  It was a pretty nice beach and definitely a great place to learn to surf.  We spent a majority of the afternoon there, and it even ended up being the most reliable beach for us during our week on the North Shore.

That afternoon we also had to run to Radio Shack in a town about 20 minutes away because my camera would not turn on and it said I needed to replace the battery pack.  It was the only camera we had with us, aside from our iPhones, so we really needed to get a replacement battery.  We were lucky enough to find a battery and a new charger, so that was good.  We were worried that we would end up having to buy a whole new camera, but we lucked out and found the right battery.  I would have been pretty sad if we hadn't had a camera to document all of our fun.

After our adventurous afternoon trying to save the camera, we headed back to our rental.  We cooked Ahi for dinner the first night, and it was delicious!

Sunset Beach

Huge waves on Sunset Beach.  There were many really good surfers out there the first couple days.

Doug swimming in the big waves at Sunset Beach.

So pretty!

Beautiful sunset!  We didn't get too many of these since it was cloudy and rainy a majority of the time, but we got a couple good ones the first few nights.

Paradise!

Our rental house.  We were in the basement.  It was a great house and a great location and the owners were super nice and helpful.  They provided us with anything we needed.  It truly was a great place to stay!

Ahi dinner.  Fish, salad, and potatoes.  Yum!

Stay tuned for more of our adventures tomorrow.  We had a near-death experience (not really, but it was pretty intense) the next day that you'll have to see to believe!