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Monday, April 3, 2017

Waimea Valley Tour - Day 4

It's certainly been a full day of adventure. To start the day we hiked up Diamond Head. Then we all went to the Dole Pineapple Plantation. Now we're finishing it all off with a tour of the Waimea Valley.


Upon leaving the Dole Pineapple Plantation, even though we had Dole Whip desserts first, it was time for lunch. We've been getting recommendations from lots of people and one of those was Kono's Kailua. After having that delicious kailua pork at the Eat the Street festival, I was ready for more!

Everyone else got to go in and have their food. After the long morning at the Dole Plantation, Alli was wiped out. She fell asleep in her carseat and I stayed behind in the car to let her sleep.

Thankfully Theresa brought me out a sampler platter.
And... I think they must have been having an off day. The pork was salty. And not just a little salty. It was hard to eat unless you had something to dilute it. I was not a fan.

The other "must do" food truck around here is Giovanni's Shrimp Truck. The line was ridiculous, but their garlic shrimp is supposed to be fantastic.

I don't eat seafood. At all. Everything is fishy.
Despite that, I still accepted a small taste from Theresa.

My mind hasn't been changed. Everyone else liked it though.

A little while later, we all found ourselves in the Waimea Valley, the "Valley of the Priests".

It's pretty in here. They've filmed a few movies and display some of the posters from them. I'm going to have to rewatch Lilo & Stitch and figure out where the Waimea Valley appeared in it.

A wandering peacock.


And this tree had lots of very hungry caterpillars.

Which then turn into beautiful butterflies.

With over 10 adults, we were able to get the group rate at just $12 each.

The highlight of the Waimea Valley is a 3/4 mile walk in. For $10 per adult you can get a roundtrip ride. We sent Chi and Richard on ahead with Ian and Alli.

The rest of us enjoyed the pleasant walk. I know at one point we all started humming the theme from Jurassic Park.


There's our destination! A 45 foot waterfall with a pool you can swim in at the bottom.

Have a good ride guys?

After getting changed into swimsuits, the lifeguards handed us floatation vests.
Ian, give me a Shaka!
No, no, no...

Okay, just give me any hand signal. He chose the number 3.

Brrr.

Lots of people from our group braved the cold water for an opportunity to jump off a waterfall.

After waiting in a short line, you grab whatever handholds you can find and pull yourself up to a small platform.

With everyone staring at you (wishing you'd hurry up so they can have their turn), you have to figure out your best trick. We'll start this one off with a cannon ball.

Despite my requests, Ian didn't feel like jumping off the waterfall.

You go Tyler.


Donald giving everyone a shout-out before jumping.

Ian was happy to warm back up with his Gram. The rest of us decided to stay for a little longer.

I followed up the cannon ball with a front flip off the waterfall. And just because I hadn't seen anyone do one yet, I did a backflip into the water next. Afterwards some kid told me "Awesome backflip dude".

To finish it off, Ethan, Austin, and I all squeezed up in there.

Then we all dove off simultaneously.


While I was out in the water, I'm watching Theresa with my camera taking pictures of me, but I also see another photographer with a ginormous lens and a pro-body camera walking around. I know I look pretty cool jumping off this waterfall.

Then I hear someone mention that there's a Kardashian here.
That's not something I follow, so she had to be pointed out to me. Turns out it's Kourtney Kardashian. Makes sense now I guess why there's paparazzi here. Here's the shot Abby took of her.

We packed it all up and began our walk to the entrance. Now that I knew to look for him, I could see the paparazzi running over into different out of the way spaces that he could get shots from. Rich, Chi and the kids were waiting for the cart to take them back to the entrance, but had to wait an extra cycle after the Kardashian crew walked up and got the next cart.
While we waited at the entrance for everyone in the cart to arrive, the paparazzi guy walked by, talking with his editor on the phone about how he got some great shots of Kourtney wearing her thong swimsuit.

Afterwards we found the whole write-up here on DailyMail.com.


PICTURE EXCLUSIVE: Kourtney Kardashian gets wet and wild in Hawaii during vacation with ex Scott Disick and their children


He even happened to get Austin in a couple of his shots. Now Austin is famous!



We all enjoyed a relaxing walk to the entrance.

Alli sure looks like she had fun.

We had a couple different experiences driving home. T was navigating and all of the sudden we got re-routed. Rita wasn't so lucky. An accident of some kind completely closed the road, causing people to make u-turns to get where they wanted to go. The whole thing added an hour to their drive home.

For us though, it was a decent drive and we were even treated to a rainbow.

And with that, I thought our day was done. But noooooo. With kids, there's always some excitement.
If there's one drawback to the house, it's that the view towards the beach also overlooks the main road. Many times during the day, from the porch we could hear sirens from police, fire trucks, and ambulances.

Who would have guessed that just past midnight, one of those would be coming for us.
Asleep in her crib, out of no-where, Alli started choking and gasping for air. T and I jumped into action. With spit bubbling out of her mouth and Alli starting to go into panic mode from not being able to breathe, a quick call to 911 was in order.
An ambulance and fire truck were dispatched to the house, so for anyone in that neighborhood hearing sirens coming down the street after midnight, those were for us.

From the ambulance, Alli and T would take a ride to the nearby emergency room, with Gram and me following behind in the car.
After a breathing treatment and steroid, she was breathing much better. She got that pink horsie from the EMTs in the ambulance. Turned out to be a bad case of croup. The docs said it's been going around their small community and they've already seen 3 other similar cases tonight.

After a couple hours, she was at least breathing well enough to head home. It made for a long night.
Kids...

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