Hump Day in Hawaii 2009

We started the day a little rougher than the others -- he realized that he left his favorite Beaver Creek hat on the beach yesterday during camp and immediately had to go to the beach to see if he could find it. At 6:30 in the morning! Ouch! I told him there was little chance of him finding his hat as someone has probably picked it up by now. Sure enough, as if its only purpose was to prove me wrong, there was the hat, sitting quietly right where he had left it! Yeah - life could continue. So it did -- right into the worksheets the national park ranger, Gerry, gave Danny to complete for a Jr. Ranger pin. Now he is ready to go back to the heaiu to get his own badge.

In addition to his completed worksheets, he enlisted Pop-Pop to help him open up the husk of a coconut that he found as we were walking through the lagoons I mentioned yesterday. All is right with the world now that he has a opened up a coconut and actually eaten it. It is even better in his eyes that he actually found it and therefore was 'free.' I admit I am a little concerned about my son's obsession with tropical fruit! Coconut, guava, banana, passionfruit, papaya, etc. He ate all of it today, thanks to some snacks provided by our nice tour guide for our Pinz Safari Tour this afternoon. This is the "PINZ" that we rode in. It was a 2 hour tour on land near the northern coast.

After the wonderful Pinz Tour, we stopped at Poholo Valley -- breathtaking view of cliffs (behind the boys). I love this picture of the 2 guys! Aren't they handsome!

Here are those cliffs near Poholo Valley. Amazing! The waters on this side are extremely rough. We learned that even though Maui is not very far away, boats cannot cross over the channel separating the two islands because of the severe winds and therefore the extremely difficult waters.

The mules that Danny fed after our safari tour!

Did I mention that my son seems to have a new obsession with tropical fruit? (passionfruit, coconuts, and guava etc.)

As good as the safari tour was, the ride back to the house was almost better. First, there was a whale sighting -- our first this trip. The following picture shows a little spray right in the center of the pic. That is caused by the whale!

Then, we not only saw a beautiful rainbow but the clouds parted ways for about an hour so that we could see the top of Mt. Mauna Kea with its observatories and all the snow. This is a very rare occurence and was so breathtaking.

Along with a wonderful dinner at Merriman's up in Waimea, it was a great day. Although Danny probably won't remember dinner tomorrow -- he fell asleep at the table about 20 minutes after we arrived!