Anniversary Trip - Day 5 (part I)

First, I want to apologize for the delay in updating the blog! (for any that may be upset... ;) ) Unfortunately, life will interfere (like getting taxes done!)

We are ready for our rescheduled helicopter tour (Blue Hawaiian Helicopters) of the island! 

(Kauai, in case you forgot)

It is still windy but not as bad. It is earlier in the morning so a lot of shadows (I'm apologizing ahead of time)

Our pilot was awesome! Asking us where we are all from (there are 5 of us inside + pilot). He also would crack jokes as we went. They played music for us in the headphones, not too loud, and made it really enjoyable! (at least for me). We were given mikes so if we wanted to ask the pilot questions, we could.

I will only give you a couple of the highlights. However, if you are interested, we were given a CD with our entire trip on it! (We've all heard the jokes about sitting through a slide show of vacation pictures, LOL)

We fly over Nawiliwili Bay! When Doug and I had driven by here, there was a very large cruise ship sitting in it!

The pilot then takes us up the Huleia Stream, telling us about the area; the largest private land owners, the Robinson Family, and the second largest, Steve Case! That name sound familiar? It didn't to me either (it may have to you...) but we were told he was a co-founder of AOL!
One of the sites we flew over and we didn't get a picture of until later, was Menehune Fishpond. It is the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark! This pond has a great history to it! If you type (or copy and paste) it to your search engine, you will get a lot of pages to go to! Just about all of them are the same.

We flew over some lush, green areas (something Arizonans don't see very often!)

And, we saw quite a few waterfalls! One of the more well known ones is Manawaiopuna Falls, or Jurassic Falls. It is in several scenes in Jurassic Park!

You can get a tour to the falls, but it is privately owned and they use a different helicopter company.

One of the highlights of visiting Kauai is the Napali Coast! A lot of people go to the island just to see these cliffs! Although our tour was early in the morning (I would highly recommend later in the day to do this tour)  and the shadows made it a little difficult to get really good pictures, it was still well worth seeing!

As we flew along the coastline, we came to another famous site, (at least for movie enthusiasts!),
Honopu Beach beautiful! We could easily see why it is picked for films! The movie you may have remembered seeing this beach & Arch? Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides!

The scale of this Arch is hard to imagine without actually seeing it for yourself! But I can give you some idea, the arch measures about 65' high and 200' wide! The waterfall beside it? About 100 feet!

We see a lot more things (mostly green with a lot of water!) that we took tons of pictures of but these are the highlights! We had a great time and would do this tour again but maybe at a later time of day.

Our Day didn't end there! Stay tuned for Part II!