Anniversary Trip - Day 5 (part II)

I decided to divide this day into two parts. There was a lot of pictures and I am really, really controlling myself to not post ALL the pictures we took! (Unless you want to see them?) 

After our helicopter tour, Doug and I decide to go back to the gardens where the luau was held. I am so glad we did! You may remember that we attended the luau at Smith Family Garden? When we arrived, we payed our $6/each (well worth it) ticket to enter. The lady hands Doug a bag of bird food!

Well, this became a favorite part of the day for us! As Doug walked along (before he started handing out the goodies), I looked behind us and noticed we had a "following"....

Doug started gathering more "admirers" as he starts dropping some of the treats!

We came to the area where the luau was held and decided to explore a little more here.

There is a beautiful bridge that crosses over a partial moat. You can tell Doug went ahead of me...(notice the foreground)

As we cross the bridge, we notice a fish (who would have guessed that know us!) in a pocket of water. What was unusual, was that there didn't seem to be a way to the main part of the pond! There was a ridge of dirt/sand between the fish and the rest of the pond.  Well....

 The fish promptly turned on his side and swam over the ridge! Clever little fish! I bet he's done that before!

This garden is one of the more beautiful places on the island! The scenery was breathtaking!

Doug poses by the Aku Aku head (I think we are still on Kaua'i?)

Doug discovers that all he has to do is hold out his hand with some treats....

These little birds didn't care if there was another one already there! They were piled 2 and 3 deep!

And, of course, I had to do it too!

The Gardens are home to over 20 types of fruit, bamboo groves and lots and lots of flowers! Oh, and birds! 

 This is a Christmas Tree Palm with it's fruit!

And my favorite fruit, coffee!! ;)

There were hanging lobster claw,

Lady Di Heliconia

Queen Emma Lily and even a

MONEY Tree!! 

A Pacific Golden Plover was just one of the species (besides chickens) we spotted.

Another Red Crested Cardinal,

We even were treated to a duck and her babies!

Doug managed to get the young ones to be brave enough to come see what he had. Mom was not falling for it though!

We come around a corner and notice that some people ahead of us (we pretty much had the gardens to ourselves up to this point) had stopped and were taking pictures!

Of this handsome guy!

As beautiful as this fella was, we didn't see a female (peahen). Males usually spread their beautiful plumage to attract a mate! Which, we were pretty sure wasn't one of us!

Remember all those "fans" Doug had attracted? Well, I guess this guy was afraid of the little ones! He kept backing away from the crowd!

The peacock was semi-climatic to the rest of the day! But we did see some more interesting flowers.

Calotropis gigantea (crown flower)

Don't be too impressed, I looked it up! ;)

 

False Banana Flower (we didn't see any false bananas though) 

The bush these flowers were on, was called a Mickey Mouse Plant. Because my daughter and her husband love going to Disneyland, I thought I would take a picture to send to them. I was slightly disappointed that it didn't look like Mickey Mouse!

There was a cute little pond that had lilies growing.

Even a pink one!

Oh! And we found the peahen! She was hiding toward the front of the gardens!

Stay tuned for more!

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!

Anniversary Day! Trip Day 4

Today, we celebrate being married for 35 years! My husband definitely knows how to make me cry...  He gave me this wonderful anniversary gift:

I had noticed the advertisements for this ring, but didn't think he had!

We had a luau scheduled for later in the evening, so we had most of the day to do some more sightseeing and look for more geocaches. We stopped by for the shops at the Kilohana Plantation and ended up taking the train tour!

While we were waiting to board, I spotted this little bird on the train.

 Had to get a selfie on the train, of course!

 This little guy in front of us spent most of his trip paying attention to us instead of the scenery, but every once in awhile, something would catch his eye!

CHICKENS!! (I told you they were everywhere!)

The plantation had a lot of things growing! Some of them I have never heard of, but a few I recognized! The coconuts were everywhere. In fact, the east shore of Kauai is known as the Coconut Coast.

  Doug's favorite (and mine) was the apple banana! We would buy them and just have them with us to snack on!

 This is one of the Taro Ponds on the plantation. Have you ever tried poi? Well, they say it's an acquired taste! I did learn that it is usually better when mixed with something. Our tour guide said he eats his poi with Doritos! hmmmm, I don't think I'll be trying that one!

Kauai was known for it's sugar plantations. Though it isn't the main crop anymore, tourist are, there are still some sugar cane to be seen.

We also saw some pineapple fields. Did you know it takes 2 years for a pineapple to ripen? Not sure I'm that patient!

About half way through our trip, the train makes a stop so we can stretch our legs. Although this wasn't exactly a "petting zoo", the passengers could feed the animals. There were goats, pigs and horses. 

 This little pig was interested in what I was doing!

 I wasn't exactly sure what this was but thought it was interesting. (If someone that reads this knows, please let me know! ;))

 These are the Hawaiian Christmas trees! They are extremely tall! It is hard to get a picture that shows the scope.

 At the end of this blog, I will post pictures of all the hibiscus flowers we saw. (that way you don't have to scroll through them if you don't want to)

After our train ride, we decided to go find some geocaches! I love the places geocaching takes us! We pull up in a parking lot and this tree was waiting to have it's picture taken!

We make our way down to a small cove to find the cache. It was very beautiful with the waves, but it was windy!

 Across the cove, we spotted a lighthouse. We would end up at this one a little later.

I spotted another one of these beautiful birds on our way to the next cache. (I learned later it is a red-crested cardinal).

If it wasn't for caching, we probably would not have passed seeing this lighthouse. It isn't a tourist attraction.

Now it's time to head back to the hotel to get ready for the luau! I didn't take my camera so that I could just enjoy the luau. We went to Smith's Family Garden Luau. It is all put on by the family!

On our way to the luau site, we get a tram ride around the garden! One of the other attendees spotted this very patriotic colored rooster!

Now, for all the different hibiscus we saw today!

Stay tuned for the next day's adventure! We come back to the gardens during the day!