2008 March Kuau'i Trip

Our trip to Kuau'i

2008-03-16 Sunday:
Noonish Delta flight SLC to HNL Honolulu. Went right over to Go! Airlines on a CRJ200 to Lihue. We picked up our rental car, an Impala with leather and sunroof for the low low price of about 220/wk from Budget. We made it just in time to check-in at the Lihue Marriott Vacation Club at 6:59pm. They were packing up but were very gracious and made us feel very welcome.

We got to our rooms and it was a great view in the Kilohana tower on the 8th floor. The Lihue Marriott is Marriott's first Hawaiian property I was told and was purchased and repurposed so the rooms are not quite like a typical Marriott let alone a Marriot Vacation Club. But they are not bad, quite nice really. We had the 2 room dealy which was plenty big, so 2 bathrooms, a Murphy bed hidden away in an armoire, a big TV with DVD player, a galley kitchenette with sink, dishwasher, microwave and 36" fridge. No stove or oven though. The other room had king bed, armoire with TV and cube fridge and the usual desks, tables, chairs, etc.

Our balconies overlooked the bay there and the crashing waves were just the right decibel level to make you know you were on vacation. We almost immediately crashed after traveling all day.

2008-03-17 Monday:

We got up late, a good 12hrs sleep.

Made the usual trips to Costco, local stores and WalMart to get 'supplies' and food we had forgotten or did not want to bring. We got some salad and accouterments, boogie boards, sunblock, milk ($5 at Costco, was $8.99 at local Star Market!), chips, mango-peach salsa, Slack Key Hawaiian CD, etc.

Back to the room.

Owner's reception was at 5. It was not that eventful, but they had food and drink and some entertainment and the night was lovely. We noticed we were well under average age for Marriott timeshare owners, but hey... enjoy it now, right? By 8:30 we went back to the room and pretty much crashed with a little TV. Jet lag still made it feel quite late.

2008-03-18 Tuesday:
8:30am Helicopter ride with NO DOORS! It was AWESOME. We left from Port Allen and went up Waimea Canyon, then across/through the Na Pali coast, then across most of the island.

We then grabbed a quick breakfast at Restaurant "M" and then drove to the top of Waimea Canyon stopping at every view point possible, pretty much.

We briefly overlooked the so-called Russian Fort which is pretty much a horrible job of putting up about 1.5 feet of poorly lain rock walls, more like rock piles. The story of the maniac behind it all is pretty interesting though.

This night we got some meals at a BBQ place on..... It was okay, in particular the Kalua Pork & Cabbage and Kalby beef (not coby). But maybe not incredible.

2008-03-19 Wednesday:
Got up late again, drove through Knutsen Gap, the Tunnel of Trees, through Kasdfds??, to Puipu and took a Waiolai Marriott Resort Presentation of about 120 minutes which landed us about $125 in Mahalo dollars which actually goes pretty far on Kuauai. We tried the southern beaches, pretty good snorkeling but a bit rough. I saw a giant sea turtle at all of 6 inches away from me. We sort of freaked each other out and both swam away as fast as we could. The turtle won the speed race by a large margin. They can MOVE! Checked out the Grand Hyatt (quite nice),
We drove up to Kintaro in Ka'a and had fabulous sushi for about $9 + tip after applying only 1 $25 certificate!

2008-03-20 Thursday: Beaches, Noodles,

2008-03-21 Friday: Scotty Dog's (Scotty's) in Ka'a overlooking the beach. Had a Pork and Cabbage sandwich with fries and a Mahi fish sandwich with fries. A smidgen spendy ($12 or so each), but quite tasty and a great view.

2008-03-22 Saturday: Today we went to Hanalei, had some walnut shrimp, fried noodles, shave ice, and then went to Tunnels beach. Great snorkeling! I'll put this place up and maybe beyond Shark's Cove on Oahu. A pretty large circular reef with lots of fish that swarm you if you give them a little food. The outer edge of the reef drops off preciptously and looks like it would be great for scuba, but is good for snorkeling too if it is a bright and sunny day. Huge Humu Humu's!

2008-03-23 Sunday:
Go! Airlines lost our luggage on a 20 minute flight. Annoying, but they got it to our room by the time we got back after dinner and strolling. We went to the beach after checking in, lay in the sun, boogie boarded a little. Back to room for shower. We watched the sunset on Waikiki before heading east for food. Because it was Easter, no torch lighting. Then we went to To Dai Sushi in Honolulu over by the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Pretty good, if you stick to what you like, but it did not seem as good as last year. Snow Crab was good, tempura was great, the sushi, poke, sashimi were all pretty good. The walnut shrimp was also pretty good but not as good as at the Panda in Hanalei. We will probably try some different places next time. Maybe some dim sum places.

2008-03-24 Monday:
Got up, ate some quick food, beach to boogie board. Lay in the sun. Then off to a 90 minute cateraman cruise on the Mai-Tai for $36 total (call in with a coupon from one of the may activity books all over in advance and you get $5 off per person). Great ride, very fun, great crew, and if you do drink, they have drinks for $2 which is notedly a good deal. If you don't drink, $2 water or OJ is not so great. No drinking at all is a great price and allows you to take more photos and enjoy the view without interruption. We didn't see any whales, but what a beautiful day, beautiful views, and it was just incredibly relaxing.

We had early dinner at the Nagamura Noodle Saimen place, per tradition. It was very good as usual for about $12 each, but it really put in perspective how really good the little noodle place in Lihue was. It was comparitively awesome! And their most expensive shrimp tempura saimen was only $6! They were not too happy about us continually asking and calling about fried noodles though! "No fried noodles today!" Click... Bzzzzzzzzz.. "Um... Okay, Thanks. Hey! They hung up on me!"

Sunset at Waikiki, lots of photos. Again no torchlighting on Monday. Oh well. A bit of ABC shopping, and elsewhere and then back to hotel where they were holding our bags, taxi was already arranged and loaded when we got there. Jumped in and we were off to the airport. We were immediately greeted by a sky cap. For six bucks gratuity, he got us checked in, took our bags through agriculture and to security for us and us off to our gate in about 360 seconds. That took so little time, we just plopped down for a about an hour before we even went through security. I forget how quickly you get done if you use a skycap.

The flight back was uneventful, just like it should be. We got good exit row seats with plent of room for our legs and both fell asleep shortly after takeoff. We both actually slept most of the trip. Regardless, we were both still a bit groggy in Salt Lake trying to get our bags and find the car....

2008 March

2008-03-03 Monday: Piers arrived 3rd March, Monday. I've taken a few days off and a few half days to spend as much time with him as possible. We had some troubles getting him here on United Airlines because of their ambiguous unaccompanied minor policy. Many phonecalls later and failed trip to the airport on Sunday the 2nd, and three schedule changes later, he arrived a day late, but not too much worse for wear. (We are using Delta next time). I picked him up Monday afternoon and since it was nearing rush hour decided to spend some time in Salt Lake. We ended up at the Gateway and grabbed a bite at the foodcourt and then saw "Be Kind, Please Rewind" which was actually a pretty nice little film.

2008-03-04 Tuesday: I worked a half day or so and then Jenivee, Piers, and I went to NOJHS to watch Shaylee play against THBell JHS. In the fourth quarter when NO was up 36 to 6, the coach started to put in the 4 7th graders on the team. So Shaylee had about 4 minutes of action and even sunk a foul shot for the first 7th grader point of the year! We all (Rylee & Shaylee) grabbed some Sams Club pizzas on way home and had pizza, then bed.

2008-03-05 Wednesday: I took day off and Piers and I made rounds of some stores, got him some shoes and pants, then played quite a bit of Wii bowling, baseball, and tennis. We grabbed dinner at Carl's Jr where kids eat free on Wednesdays. Not sure that was really worth it, but it was fine. That evening we went to my work where I finished up some paperwork and helped Piers with his math homework. After, we watched "Underdog" on DVD from a Redbox and then it was bedtime.

2008-03-06 Thursday: Half day at work and then Piers and I spent afternoon playing Wii and Xbox. We went to my Dad's for dinner (it was very yummy) with all the kids and stayed for a good while. My dad took some photos that hopefully we will get copies of. Unfortunately he took them after we had gorged ourselves on desert. Home, watched just a little TV, then bed.

2008-03-07 Friday: Spent some time getting some errands ran and prepping ski trip, then visited Jenivee at work for few minutes, then went to the Union Station in Ogden which was hosting some sort of Stone and Jewel event. We visited the Browning Arms museum and the Railroad Museum. We actually spent quite a bit of time there. We then went and got Shaylee and all the girl's snowboard equip, went to Canyon Sports and picked up ski's and a pass for Piers and me (but they forgot to actually give me the pass, long story). Then we dashed off to meet Damon and Justin at Florider at the new downtown center in Ogden. As I was driving away I noticed all I had was a receipt, no physical pass, and wondered if this was normal. Anyway, the Florider was AWESOME. A smidgen expensive at $20/hour but overall, worth it. Other than employees and probably a couple of their friends, we had the place to ourselves. It's something like $200 to rent it by the hour, so maybe the employees are supposed to jump in so we don't get too good a deal or something, since we didn't rent the whole thing. But unfortunately, the employees and their friends are rather good, so even though there were five of us and five of them, it ended up being like we were 5 and they were 20 (their rides were typically, and easily, 4 or 5 times longer than ours which were usually only a few seconds long). This was not too annoying, but when our hour was up, they turned off the ride without a second to spare and kicked us out. So... maybe it was a little annoying on that note. But it was still a blast. We went to Costa Vida next door after and had some great food. The kids sucked down a few balloons and made munchkin voices for a little while, won some ice cream bars, and then we headed out. Home, bit of Wii/TV, bed.

2008-03-08 Saturday: Got up, breakfast, rounded up ski clothes, tried finding receipt for Canyon Sports to call them, finally found it safely tucked away in pocket in my jacket I was not going to take. It's now 11am and I am frustrated we are maybe going to get a half day skiing, and not the better half. I call Canyon and they act like I am crazy, that I must have the pass. I tell them I'll be there to pick up my pass, as the receipt is NOT all you need. You need the pass. I am now thoroughly frustrated as we now also have to stop by the shop again. We stop by, they say I must have it, I notice they have video, I ask them to please review to see if I really was handed the pass; 30 miutes later, the young woman helping me walks back out from the back office, makes no eye contact. I ask if she saw what happened, she said 'Yep.' Walked up the register, opened the pass drawer, handed me a pass, and said 'Here you go.' She didn't seem too happy, so I just said, 'Sorry for the confusion,' and got on my way. I am fairly unhappy with the unfortunate experience as I just had to fight to get a discount day pass for $51 and it is now approaching 1:00pm and we still have good half hour of driving left. The adult non-discounted half day pass is also $51 so this has cost me way too much time and grief. Otherwise, Canyon Sports was great. So we eventually found our way to Snowbird after a few wrong turns trying to take a shortcut through South Weber, up Weber Canyon and across Trapper's Loop. We got about 3 hours skiing in and for Piers and Shaylee, that was really plenty. I would have liked to try out more runs, but maybe next year. The snow is noticeably getting mushy this time of year, but I bet it was better higher up. All in all, we had a pretty good time. Home, dinner, Eli Stone, Wii, bed.

2008-03-09 Sunday: We watched the BBC version of Chronicles of Narnia during the day. We had planned on going to a Grizzlies' IHL Hockey game at 4pm, but Piers sort of decided he didn't really like watching games unless he could run around and cause trouble, as he put it. So we went to RedBox and got "Dragon Wars" to watch, grilled some steak, steamed asparagus, had caeser salad, and home made milk shakes. Then bedtime.

2008-03-10 Monday: Piers is spending his day with Grandpa Lester today.

2008-03-11 Tuesday:

2008-03-12 Wednesday: