We took another class! This was lei making, or in this case Lei Po'o which were crown/headband creations. Noni, Peanut, Peaches, Lou, and I all made one.
We used carnations and lillies and some spider plant leaves.
Peanut did a great job. It wasn't easy to keep track of all the flowers and make them tight enough.
T helped Lou with hers and it turned out great!
Noni helped Peaches and hers was beautiful too!
Great job girls!
We grabbed a picture of them with the teacher before we left. She was really sweet.
We got a picture in front of the Mele Kalikimaka sign before we left.
They actually held up surprisingly well with all that handling!
We went back later that night to the beach walk and did a little photo shoot with the teenagers at sunset.
Almost done with the vacation pictures! Just a couple more posts. :)
I honestly wasn't too excited about this day because we had been go-go-going and I was tired, but it ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole trip! This was another thing the lady at the car rental had told us we needed to do. We had heard of it and her suggestion clinched it. We had to pay a fee to go into this national park, but it wasn't too bad. It was the only time we climbed up into the mountainous part of the island and it was really beautiful.
Ta da!
This is called the Iao Needle. T read all the descriptions of everything and this was a big battle sight for the old Hawaiian kings.
They would post a lookout up there!
They had very few paved pathways and the needle was just a short climb so we set off on the unpaved paths that were cut through the dense foliage.
All the paths followed pretty closely to the river and there were places every few hundred feet where you could cut down to it.
We had gotten these henna tattoos at the swap meet, even F. The lady saw us all together and, "Oh come come! Even brother needs one!" Haha.
Lou scratched hers off right away instead of waiting the 15 minutes to let it set so hers was very faint.
Speaking of Lou...I think this was her favorite day. Since it wasn't as dangerous of a path we let her lead and she was SO proud of herself! She said, "I'm the leader?!" and she forged a trail like nobody's business.
Some of the tree trunks were huge!
Another pause by the stream...river?
And then right back to the trail with our fearless guide!
At one point in the trail the overhead branched had formed a tunnel. Us adults had to kind of squat-walk through because it was so low.
Here's a video.
The further from the main park we got the less trail-like got. In some spots it was just climbing over rocks.
It was so fun traipsing around and exploring.
So proud of herself.
It was so incredibly beautiful there.
A natural playground. :)
We finally decided to turn around, but Bug went a little further up the river.
T and Boo went part of the way with her.
While we were waiting for them the younger girls made boats out of sticks and leaves and raced them down the river.
The rocks were super slippery. I think all of us ended up with at least one wet tennis shoe. The littles got both of theirs sopping wet. :P
They made a second set of boats and we all watched them race.
They got stuck before a little waterfall so we helped them along. :)
They cheered for their boats on the way down.
I was glad we went early in the day because as we hiked out we ran into tons of people starting off on the trail. While we were there we had only seen a couple of people. It definitely got more crowded as the day went on. We found a big rock and had a picnic before we left.
