Whales and more whales....

As you may know, one of my main goals for this trip (other than fun in the sun, ocean, and black sand beaches  AND time with Gary and his mom) was to see humpback whales in the wild.  Sunday evening we headed out on a smaller boat to enjoy "sunset and whale watching".  Of course they don't promise you see whales but we went in the middle of the birthing and mating season off the coast of Maui.  So we did see whales, mostly spouts and tails, and it was amazing.  It wasn't quite like National Geographic specials where they seem so close, but to see spouts of air even was great.  We saw some large ones jump, baby ones break the surface of the water over and over, and one highlight was a large whale tail slapping over 20 times in a row (usually part of mating behavior).  I loved it and rather than feeling like I can cross it off my list of "Just for Fun Mortal Goals"  (now referred to as my bucket list by most of the world) I want to add other whale watching adventures in my life.  Alaska will probably be next.

We also had whales all around the cruise ship as we cruise the Na Poli Coast off of Kauai.  Again a fun site even though they were quite a distance from the boat except occasionally when one surfaces nearby.  The Na Poli coast can only be seen by boat and it is a beautiful collection of waterfalls and cliffs of all colors--black, orange, reds--and green anywhere something can grow.  The pictures don't really do it justice.  If you can notice most of the people are looking away from the coast into the ocean.  That is because they were trying to catch pictures.  All I got were pictures of the ocean where a whale had been.  Oh well.  We saw some great scenes.

Wouldn't be Hawaii without the palm trees.
I took a lot of pictures of them.

Kauai was my favorite island and I love love to go back and spend a week there.  There is a lot to do and some nice beaches and ocean.  These are scenes from Kauai.

Gary and his mom (he is in the center of the overlook)
taking pictures of the canyon.

Grand Canyon of Hawaii.
It is about 10 miles long and very deep.
It actually took my breath away when I first saw it.
None of my pictures show the grandeur of it.
I was expecting just the red canyons and the greens
were amazing.  You need to see it.

Lookout to the ocean and sky--breathtaking!

For some reason the caption feature is flipping my pictures around.  However the chicken picture is because there are chickens everywhere in Kauai due to the hurricane a number of years ago that blew over all of the island's chicken coops.  There are no predators so they are spreading everywhere.

The next picture is from the Fern Ghetto where many people go to get married in Kauai.

Google Car
Interesting side note--Google was actually mapping this area while we visited. 
We got to speak to the two men who were working and learned about about how they do google maps. 
In about 9-12 months, if someone zoomed in on this part of the map, we could be seen walking the paths by the lookout.  How many people can say that? (And this is actually at the canyon lookout but the site bounced it down and it won't move back.)

This one made the Cruise Lady CD.
She kept trying to get a kiss picture from us.
Again we were some of the only ones getting our feet wet here.



And the ocean.....

We headed back pass the Na Poli coast of Kauai and headed to Honolulu by Saturday morning.  It was a restful but busy trip and it was hard to believe that it was over and time for the next adventure...